JOACHIM DU BELLAY (1547)

Poet, leader with Pierre de Ronsard of the literary group known as the Pléiade.
Du Bellay is the author of the Pléiade´s manifesto, La Défense et Illustration de la langue française (1549), in which he asserts that French is capable of producing a modern literature at least equal to that of the Italians.

Du Bellay was born into a noble family of the Loire Valley. His cousin Jean, was a prominent cardinal and diplomat. Joachim studied law and the humanities in Poitiers and Paris, and in 1549-50 his first sonnets, inspired by those of the Italian poet Petrarch, were published.

In 1553 he went with Joan on a mission to Rome. By this time he had started to write on religious themes, but his experience of court life in the Vatican seems to have disillusioned him. He turned instead to meditations on the vanished glories of ancient Rome in the Antiquités de Rome, and to melancholy satire in his finest work, the Regrets (both published after his return to France in 1558).

Throughout his life du Bellay suffered ill health and intermittent deafness. His portraits show a withdrawn and austere figure and reinforce the impression of a man totally dedicated to his art. He had a sincere affection for his country and determined that it should have a literature to rival that of any other nation.

He introduced new literary forms into French, with the first book of odes and the first of love sonnets in the language. Abroad, he influenced the English lyric poets of the 16th century, and some of his work was translated by Edmund Spenser as Complaints... (1591).