French Renaissance Literature - Poetry

Poetry

Poetry in the first years of the sixteenth century is characterised by the elaborate sonorous and graphic experimentation and skillful word games of a number of Northern poets (such as Jean Lemaire de Belges and Jean Molinet), generally called “les Grands Rhétoriqueurs” who continued to develop poetic techniques from the previous century. Soon however, the impact of Petrarch (the sonnet cycle addressed to an idealised lover, the use of amorous pardoxes), Italian poets in the French court (like Luigi Alamanni), Italian Neoplatonism and humanism, and the rediscovery of certain Greek poets (such as Pindar and Anacreon) would profoundly modify the French tradition. In this respect, the French poets Clément Marot and Mellin de Saint-Gelais are transitional figures: they are credited with some of the first sonnets in French, but their poems continue to employ many of the traditional forms.

The new direction of poetry is fully apparent in the work of the humanist Jacques Peletier du Mans. In 1541, he published the first French translation of Horace's Ars poetica and in 1547 he published a collection poems Œuvres poétiques, which included translations from the first two cantos of Homer's Odyssey and the first book of Virgil's Georgics, twelve Petrarchian sonnets, three Horacian odes and a Martial-like epigram; this poetry collection also included the first published poems of Joachim Du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard.

Around Ronsard, Du Bellay and Jean Antoine de Baïf there formed a group of radical young noble poets of the court (generally known today as La Pléiade, although use of this term is debated). The character of their literary program was given in Du Bellay's manifesto, the "Defense and Illustration of the French Language" (1549) which maintained that French (like the Tuscan of Petrarch and Dante) was a worthy language for literary expression and which promulgated a program of linguistic and literary production (including the imitation of Latin and Greek genres) and purification. For some of the members of the Pléiade, the act of the poetry itself was seen as a form of divine inspiration (see Pontus de Tyard for example), a possession by the muses akin to romantic passion, prophetic fervor or alcoholic delirium.

The forms that dominate the poetic production of the period are the Petrarchian sonnet cycle (developed around an amorous encounter or an idealized woman) and the Horace/Anacreon ode (especially of the carpe diem — life is short, seize the day — variety). Ronsard also tried early on to adapt the Pindaric ode into French. Throughout the period, the use of mythology is frequent, but so too is a depiction of the natural world (woods, rivers). Other genres include the paradoxical encomium (such as Remy Belleau's poem prasing the oyster), the “blason” of the female body (a poetic description of a body part), and propagandistic verse.

Du Bellay's greatest poems were written during his long stay in Rome; his discovery of the ruined city, dismay at the corruption of the Papal court and loneliness gave rise to a sonnet cycle of remarkable sadness and severity (partially inspired by Ovid's Tristia).

Although Ronsard attempted a long epic poem of the origins of the French monarchy entitled La Franciade (modeled on Virgil and Homer), this experiment was largely judged a failure, and he remains most remembered today for his various collections of Amours (or love poems), Odes and Hymnes.

Jacques Peletier du Mans's later encyclopedic collection L'Amour des amours, consisting of a sonnet cycle and a series of poems describing meteors, planets and the heavens, would influence the poets Jean Antoine de Baïf and Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (whose Semaine is a Baroque description of the creation of the world).

Several poets of the period — Jean Antoine de Baïf (who founded an "Académie de Poésie et de Musique" in 1570), Blaise de Vigenère and others — attempted to adapt into French the Latin, Greek or Hebrew poetic meters; these experiments were called "vers mesurés" and "prose mesuré" (for more, see the article "musique mesurée").

Although the royal court was the center of much of the century's poetry, Lyon — the second largest city in France in the Renaissance — also had its poets and humanists, most notably Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, Olivier de Magny and Pontus de Tyard. Scève's Délie, objet de plus haulte vertu — composed of 449 ten syllable ten line poems (dizains) and published with numerous engraved emblems — is exemplary in its use of amorous paradoxes and (often obscur) allegory to describe the suffering of a lover.

Similarly, Madeleine Des Roches and her daughter Catherine Des Roches were the center of a literary circle based in Poitiers between 1570 and 1587, and which included the poets Scévole de Sainte-Marthe, Barnabé Brisson, René Chopin, Antoine Loisel, Claude Binet, Nicolas Rapin and Odet de Turnèbe.

Poetry at the end of the century was profoundly marked by the civil wars: pessimism, dourness and a call for retreat from the world predominate (as in Jean de Sponde). However, the horrors of the war were also to inspire one Protestant poet, Agrippa d'Aubigné, to write a brilliant poem on the conflict:Les Tragiques.

Principal French poetry collections published in the 16th century:

• Clément Marot Adolescence clémentine (1532)
• Various Blasons du corps féminin (1536)
• Clément Marot Psaumes (1541) - translation of the Psalms
• Maurice Scève Délie, objet de plus haulte vertu (1544)
• Pernette Du Guillet Rimes (1545)
• Jacques Peletier du Mans Œuvres poétiques (1547)
• Mellin de Saint-Gelais Œuvres (1547)
• Joachim du Bellay Olive (1549–50) and the manifesto "Défense et illustration de la langue française" (1549)
• Pierre de Ronsard Odes (1550)
• Pontus de Tyard Le Solitaire premier (1552)
• Jean Antoine de Baïf Les Amours (1552)
• Pierre de Ronsard Les Amours (1552)
• Pierre de Ronsard Hymnes (1555–1556)
• Jacques Peletier du Mans "L'Amour des amours" and a manual on poetic composition "Art poétique français" (1555)
• Louise Labé Œuvres (1555)
• Pontus de Tyard Livre de vers lyriques (1555)
• Jean Antoine de Baïf Amour de Francine (1555)
• Remy Belleau Petites inventions (1556)
• Joachim du Bellay Antiquités de Rome (1558)
• Joachim du Bellay Songe (1558)
• Joachim du Bellay Regrets (1558)
• Remy Belleau 'La Bergerie (1565–1572)
• Etienne de La Boétie Vers français (1571)
• Pierre de Ronsard La Franciade (1572)
• Philippe Desportes Premières œuvres (1573)
• Étienne Jodelle Œuvres et mélanges poétiques (1574)
• Agrippa d'Aubigné First draft of Les Tragiques (1575)
• Nicolas Rapin Les Plaisirs du gentilhomme champestre (1575)
• Remy Belleau Pierres précieuses (1576)
• Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas La Semaine (1578)
• Etienne de La Boétie Sonnets (1580)
• Jacques Peletier du Mans "Louanges" (1581)
• Jean Antoine de Baïf Chansonnettes mesurées (1586)
• Jean de Sponde Poèmes chrétiens (1588)
• Jean-Baptiste Chassignet Le Mépris de la vie (1594)
• Marc de Papillon Œuvres (1597)
• Jean de Sponde Poésies posthumes (1597)