Thanks to her acclaimed volume of poetry and prose published in France in 1555, Louise Labe (1522-66) remains one of the most important and influential women writers of the Continental Renaissance. Best known for her exquisite collection of love sonnets, Labe played off the Petrarchan male tradition with wit and irony, and her elegies respond with lyric skill to predecessors such as Sappho and Ovid. The first complete bilingual edition of this singular and broad-ranging female author, " Complete Poetry and Prose" also features the only translations of Labe's sonnets to follow the exacting rhyme patterns of the originals and the first rhymed translation of Labe's elegies in their entirety.
