Renewing the Auld Alliance: Marie Stuart’s poetics and the Catholic League’s politics ☆

Few historical sovereigns’ political fate and posthumous image have been as influenced by creative literature as those of Marie, Queen of Scots, yet comparatively little attention has been paid to how she depicted herself in her own poetry. Most research devoted to her verse over the past two decades has been undertaken by scholars of English literature, despite the fact that Marie Stuart was neither English, nor did she write poetry in that language. Acknowledging that Marie considered France her homeland and French her mother tongue, this article examines the poems contained in Oxford MS. Add C.92, fol.22 as works of Francophone literature and situates them within a transnational historical context that has also been understudied: the intersection of the English Catholic exile cause in Paris with the politics and propaganda of France’s Catholic League, led by Marie’s cousin, Henri, Duke of Guise. It seeks to clarify not only the language and meaning of the poems themselves, but also to highlight how they draw from and contribute to a larger pool of French poetic and political discourse during the French Wars of Religion.