This is the first critical edition of Les Marguerites, poèmes héroïque, a volume originally published in Bordeaux in 1676. Written in alexandrines, divided into five cantos (chants), Les Marguerities offers a fascinating example of playful contemporary poetic taste where epic heroism is transformed into gallantry.
Poet, novelist, sometime member of Mademoiselle de Montpensier’s circle and correspondent of the Mercure Galant, Cantenac was notorious in his own time but has only recently become a subject of serious study. This book contains seventeen poetic “satyres” together with various other poems.