December 10: A Poem by Lancelot de Carle
A big thank you to Dr JoAnn DellaNeva for sharing these extracts from her book The Story of the Death of Anne Boleyn: A Poem by Lancelot de Carle. These verses were written in French by Lancelot de Carle, who was secretary to the French ambassador in England at the time of Anne Boleyn’s fall in 1536. You can find out more about JoAnn’s book at THIS LINK. Permission to use these images was given by JoAnn.
JoAnn DellaNeva is Professor of French Literature at the University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana (USA), where she began teaching in 1982. A native of Philadelphia, PA, she earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University, specializing in literature of the French Renaissance. She has written extensively on French and Italian literature, especially poetry, of the early modern period. While at Notre Dame, she had the opportunity to live and teach in London for a total of five years, most recently from 2017 to 2020. There, she took an interest in Tudor history, especially the reign of Henry VIII, and has developed this avocation as the focus of her current research in European literature. She has just published a new book, titled The Story of the Death of Anne Boleyn: A Poem by Lancelot de Carle, that includes a new French edition and facing-page translation, along with several essays, on a long narrative poem and diplomatic dispatch written by the secretary to the French ambassador in London within two weeks of the queen’s execution. JoAnn is currently researching a book tentatively titled “Romancing Henry VIII: Literary Representations of the King and his Reign in Early Modern European Literature.”