In WW2, a strong French woman, Nicole, vows revenge against the Germans and joins the French Resistance to blow up bridges, trains and German installations. She falls in love with an American agent, code named Falcon, who parachuted into France just before D Day. The group takes two German soldiers prisoner during a raid. She is disturbed by their decision to execute the prisoners and tries to save the one she has learned is an anti-Nazi. Nicole is attacked by a former classmate who is later recruited into the French Milice, the French equivalent of the German Gestapo. She is sometimes vicious in defending herself against this cruel predator. Her mother and brothers expected her to marry a farmer and continue tradition of farming. But she wanted a different career. Before the German occupation, she planned to attend the Sorbone in Paris to take advantage of her talent as a writer. When the Germans began rounding up Jews in France, her family hid a local Jewish boy her age while his family was sent away to a concentration camp. He participatd in their attacks on the Germans.

This book presents an interpretation of Maurice Scève’s lyric sequence Délie, object de plus haulte vertu (Lyon, 1544) in literary relation to the Vita nuova, Commedia, and other works of Dante Alighieri. Dante’s subtle influence on Scève is elucidated in depth for the first time, augmenting the allusions in Délie to the Canzoniere of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). Scève’s sequence of dense, epigrammatic dizains is considered to be an early example, prior to the Pléiade poets, of French Renaissance imitation of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry, in a time when imitatio was an established literary practice, signifying the poet’s participation in a tradition. While the Canzoniere is an important source for Scève’s Délie, both works are part of a poetic lineage that includes Occitan troubadours, Guinizzelli, Cavalcanti, and Dante. The book situates Dante as a relevant predecessor and source for Scève, and examines anew the Petrarchan label for Délie. Compelling poetic affinities emerge between Dante and Scève that do not correlate with Petrarch.