Poets come and go; generally this is a matter of taste, occasionally it is a matter of ontology. For example, Louise Labé, the most famous female poet of the French sixteenth century, possessed many qualities but not – or at least so Mireille Huchon has argued – that of existence. More precisely, someone called Louise Labé (c. 1524–66) seems to have existed, but may not have been the author of the much read Evvres (1555) attributed to her: a fiery dedication in defence of women's writing; an erudite and witty ‘Debat de Folie et d'Amour’; three elegies; and twenty-four sonnets. The consternation that, in many quarters, has greeted Huchon's theory – that Labé's work is a cynical supercherie with comic intent – would seem to indicate that ‘the author’ has not been permanently put to rest. Indeed, his or her ‘death’ has never been entirely convincing for readers for whom the particulars of identity or social position (such as being a woman, or not being one) are significant.

The guiding questions of this chapter will be the following: what were poets doing by means of writing and publishing poetry in the sixteenth century? How did poetry relate to the individuals, or in some cases perhaps collectives of individuals, who wrote it?

Like many familiar distinctions, the division of poetry into the three genres – epic, dramatic, and lyric – may seem timeless.