‘Donne moy ce crochet que j’arrache le reste!’: Witchcraft and Gender-Based Violence in the Poetry of Pierre de Ronsard, Agrippa d’Aubigné, and Mathurin Régnier

Abstract: New and exciting scholarship continues to enrich our understanding of gender and identity politics imbricated in the history of witchcraft in France. Demonologies have provided ample evidence for scholars to develop sound arguments about the relationship between witch-hunts and deep-rooted misogyny. In addition to demonologies as frequently cited sources of anti-woman sentiment, poetry penned by intellectuals offer fertile ground for a reconsideration of the (female) witch as a multivalent figure constantly confined by the male gaze whose passivity runs contrary to the aggression she embodies in demonologies. This article considers the passivity, abjection, and brutalization of female witches in three poems by Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585), Agrippa d’Aubigné (1552–1630), and Mathurin Régnier (1573–1613). In comparison to demonologies that portrayed witches as destructive forces capable of enacting maleficia, I focus on the witch as a passive creature confined by the male gaze of the speaker-poet. The depiction of the witch as a disparaged and dehumanized social Other whose body is poked, prodded, and mutilated at the hands of a male aggressor challenges the stereotype of aggression promulgated by sixteenth century French demonologies.