ABSTRACT
This investigation of the birthing body—its currency, its power, its multiple meanings across genres and gender—began in Chapter 1 by examining the curious case of Les Caquets de l’accouchée, penned by an ailing scribe whose condition so mirrors the state of the postpartum mother that he refers to his text as an afterbirth. Here, in what may serve as an epilogue to my own particular retellings of a number of early modern accounts, conventional and otherwise, I invoke one last example from the sixteenth century whose conceit and content are similar to Les Caquets and remind us fairly concisely of the range of birthing issues that attend to both the powerful lived experience of generation and to its metaphors for men and women who mined it for literary ends. Les Serées by Guillaume Bouchet is a series of “après-dînées,” or after-dinner conversations among a fictional, literate, provincial côterie whose discussions focus in each session on a specific topic. 1 The three volumes, published successively in 1584, 1597, and 1598, while structured more tightly in a thematic sense than Les Caquets, say less about the tellers and attendants; as with the seventeenth-century work, however, one has the impression of a vast gathering of men and women crowding into whatever room could accommodate them as the interlocutors vied for attention through displays of humor and erudition. The narrative is interspersed constantly with “un de la serée a dit,” “un autre de la serée leur dit” [“one at the soirée said,” “another at the soirée said to them”], with the women, either as hostesses or as interested or implicated parties in the discussions, weighing in from time to time. One impertinent critic of learned women stops short his intervention “de peur d’offenser les femmes, mesme celle qui estoient en ceste Seree, des plus savantes, doctes, bien disantes, avec cela des plus honestes, sages ampentity pudiques qu’on eust peu trouver” [for fear of offending women, particularly those who were at this Soirée, the most learned, wise, and articulate, in addition to being of the highest integrity, wisdom, and modesty that one could have found]. 2 Several of the after-dinner topics lead the conversationalists into realms germane to the birthing body, namely: “Des Femmes, ampentity des Filles” [Of Women and Girls] (third evening); “Des nouvellement mariez ampentity mariees” [Of newly married men and women] (fifth evening); “Des Femmes grosses d’enfans.” [Of Women great with child] (22nd evening); “Des Accouchees” [Of Newly-delivered Women] (23rd evening); and “Des Nourrices” [Of Wet Nurses] (24th evening). The opening to the evening dedicated to the pregnant woman is particularly telling and appropriate with regard to the trajectories of both Les Serées and Birthing Bodies:
Nous fusmes soupper d’aventure en trois maisons l’une apres l’autre, où nous trouvasmes les Dames du logis en diverse disposition. La premiere estoit grosse: ampentity c’est ceste Seree icy, où il ne fut parlé que des femmes grosses … La seconde estoit en couche, ampentity la Seree fut des femmes qui sont en gesine. La tierce estoit nourrice, ampentity on ne traicta aussi que des femmes qui allaictent leurs enfans. Car tout ce qui se presentoit à nos yeux, ou qu’on entendoit dire, nous servoit de matiere ampentity de livre. Valoit-il pas mieux en ces Serees ampentity convives faire un entremets de choses utiles ampentity profitables, avec une saulse de propos joyeux ampentity recreatifs, que durant le banquet avoir un cruel spectacle de gladiateurs, qui de leur sang ampentity leur cervelle gastoient les habillemens, tachoient les nappes, polluoient les viandes, ampentity remblissoient les coupes? Ne dit pas le Poëte:
Celuy qui le profit ampentity le plaisir assemble,
Meslangeant dextrement les deux en ses escrits,
Enseigne ampentity resjouit des lisans les esprits,
Gaigne le prix d’honneur de tous poincts, ce me semble. (vol. 3, pp. 277–8)
