Deborah N. Losse Books

Focusing on the exchange and alliances formed between France and Indigenous peoples during the French Wars of Religion, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of historical accounts. It explores the interactions, cultural exchanges, and mutual influences that shaped relationships between French colonizers and Native Americans. By examining primary sources, the author illuminates the complexities of these encounters and their implications for both French and Indigenous identities. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of colonial history and intercultural dynamics in the Americas.

In Syphilis: Medicine, Metaphor, and Religious Conflict in Early Modern France, Deborah Losse examines how images of syphilis became central to Renaissance writing and reflected more than just the rapid spread of this new and poorly understood disease. Losse argues that early modern writers also connected syphilis with the wars of religion in sixteenth-century France. These writers, from reform-minded humanists to Protestant poets and Catholic polemicists, entered the debate from all sides by appropriating the disease as a metaphor for weakening French social institutions. Catholics and Protestants alike leveled the charge of paillardise (lechery) at one another. Losse demonstrates how they adopted the language of disease to attack each other’s politics, connecting diseased bodies with diseased doctrine. Losse provides close readings of a range of genres, moving between polemical poetry, satirical narratives, dialogical colloquies, travel literature, and the personal essay. With chapters featuring Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, Léry, and Agrippa d’Aubigné, this study compares literary descriptions of syphilis with medical descriptions. In the first full-length study of Renaissance writers’ engagement with syphilis, Deborah Losse charts a history from the most vehement rhetoric of the pox to a tenuous resolution of France’s conflicts, when both sides called for a return to order.

This book-length study analyzes literary and cultural texts through the lens of hunting perspectives during the French Wars of Religion. It highlights the role of the king in the hunt, as depicted by court poets like Jodelle and Ronsard. The examination includes cynegetic scenes and attitudes toward hunting in works by Sebastian Brant, Erasmus, Rabelais, Jodelle, Ronsard, Ceppède, Montaigne, and Aubigné. The study connects artistic representations of hunting to details found in hunting manuals by Du Fouilloux, De Thou, Franchières, and Arcussia. Amidst the need for the monarchy to project stability, the king's figure dominates hunting activities. The author argues that hunting remained a significant concern in France despite the disruptions caused by the Wars of Religion. The analysis raises important questions about how religious affiliation influenced attitudes toward hunting and whether the violence of the Wars altered perceptions of animal cruelty. Falconry and large game hunting provide insights into the cultural and political landscape of the era. This work offers a unique perspective for historians of hunting, students of early modern Europe, and graduate students in cultural studies or anthropology, making it essential for museums focused on the significance of hunting in aristocratic life.

François Rabelais shares the Renaissance fascination for satirical eulogy. He chooses paradox for its unlimited, flexible form and incorporates elements of farce, fantasy, rhetorical technique, and popular culture within its elastic structure. Taking Marcel Tetel's distinction between satirical eulogy of lyrical and burlesque nature as a point of departure, the study identifies the essential elements of both types of paradox as they appear in the Tiers and Quart Livres. A final chapter reevaluates Rabelais' participation in the «querelle des amyes» on the basis of his paradoxical parodies of Charles Fontaine's Contr'Amye de Court.