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(February 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Joachim du Bellay Born c. 1522 Liré, Anjou, France Died (1560-01-01)1 January 1560 Paris, France Occupation Poet Nationality French Period 16th century Genre Poetry Notable works Les Regrets French literature by category French literary history Medieval Renaissance 17th 18th 19th 20th century Contemporary French writers Chronological list Writers by category Essayists Novelists Playwrights Poets Short story writers Children's writers Portals France Literature v t e Joachim du Bellay (also Joachim Du Bellay; French: [ʒoaʃɛ̃ dy bɛlɛ]; c. 1522 – 1 January 1560)[1] was a French poet, critic, and a founder of the Pléiade. He notably wrote the manifesto of the group: Défense et illustration de la langue française, which aimed at promoting French as an artistic language, equal to Greek and Latin. Contents 1 Biography 2 Last works and death 3 Bibliography 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links Biography[edit] Joachim du Bellay was born at the Castle of La Turmelière, not far from Liré, near Angers, being the son of Jean du Bellay, Lord of Gonnor, first cousin of the cardinal Jean du Bellay and of Guillaume du Bellay. His mother was Renée Chabot, daughter of Perceval Chabot and heiress of La Turmelière (Plus me plaît le séjour qu'ont bâti mes aïeux). Both his parents died while he was still a child, and he was left to the guardianship of his elder brother, René du Bellay, who neglected his education, leaving him to run wild at La Turmelière. When he was twenty-three, however, he received permission to study law at the University of Poitiers, no doubt with a view to his obtaining preferment through his kinsman the Cardinal Jean du Bellay. At Poitiers he came in contact with the humanist Marc Antoine Muret, and with Jean Salmon Macrin (1490–1557), a Latin poet famous in his day. There too he probably met Jacques Peletier du Mans, who had published a translation of the Ars Poetica of Horace, with a preface in which much of the program advocated later by La Pléiade is to be found in outline. It was probably in 1547 that du Bellay met Ronsard in an inn on the way to Poitiers, an event which may justly be regarded as the starting-point of the French school of Renaissance poetry. The two had much in common, and became fast friends. Du Bellay returned with Ronsard to Paris to join the circle of students of the humanities attached to Jean Dorat at the Collège de Coqueret. While Ronsard and Jean-Antoine de Baïf were most influenced by Greek models, du Bellay was more especially a Latinist, and perhaps his preference for a language so nearly connected with his own had some part in determining the more national and familiar note of his poetry. In 1548 appeared the Art poétique of Thomas Sébillet, who enunciated many of the ideas that Ronsard and his followers had at heart, though with essential differences in the point of view, since he held up as models Clément Marot and his disciples. Ronsard and his friends dissented violently from Sébillet on this and other points, and they doubtless felt a natural resentment at finding their ideas forestalled and, moreover, inadequately presented. The famous manifesto of the Pléiade, the Défense et illustration de la langue française (Defense and Illustration of the French Language, 1549), was at once a complement and a refutation of Sébillet's treatise. This book (inspired in part by Sperone Speroni's Dialogo delle lingue, 1542) was the expression of the literary principles of the Pléiade as a whole, but although Ronsard was the chosen leader, its redaction was entrusted to du Bellay. This work also bolstered French political debate as a means of learned men to reform their country.[2] To obtain a clear view of the reforms aimed at by the Pléiade, the Defence should be further considered in connection with Ronsard's Abrégé d'art poétique and his preface to the Franciade. Du Bellay maintained that the French language as it was then constituted was too poor to serve as a medium for the higher forms of poetry, but he contended that by proper cultivation it might be brought on a level with the classical tongues. He condemned those who despaired of their mother tongue, and used Latin for their more serious and ambitious work. For translations from the ancients he would substitute imitations, though he does not in the Defense explain precisely how one is to go about this. Not only were the forms of classical poetry to be imitated, but a separate poetic language and style, distinct from those employed in prose, were to be used. The French language was to be enriched by a development of its internal resources and by discreet borrowing from Italian, Latin and Greek. Both du Bellay and Ronsard laid stress on the necessity of prudence in these borrowings, and both repudiated the charge of wishing to Latinize their mother tongue. The book was a spirited defence of poetry and of the possibilities of the French language; it was also a declaration of war on those writers who held less heroic views. The violent attacks made by du Bellay on Marot and his followers, and on Sébillet, did not go unanswered. Sébillet replied in the preface to his translation of the Iphigenia of Euripides; Guillaume des Autels, a Lyonnese poet, reproached du Bellay with ingratitude to his predecessors, and showed the weakness of his argument for imitation as opposed to translation in a digression in his Réplique aux furieuses defenses de Louis Meigret (Lyons, 1550); Barthélemy Aneau, regent of the Collège de la Trinité at Lyons, attacked him in his Quintil Horatian (Lyons, 1551), the authorship of which was commonly attributed to Charles Fontaine. Aneau pointed out the obvious inconsistency of inculcating imitation of the ancients and depreciating native poets in a work professing to be a defence of the French language. Du Bellay replied to his various assailants in a preface to the second edition (1550) of his sonnet sequence Olive, with which he also published two polemical poems, the Musagnaeomachie, and an ode addressed to Ronsard, Contre les envieux fioles. Olive, a collection of sonnets modeled after the poetry of Petrarch, Ariosto, and contemporary Italians published by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari, first appeared in 1549. With it were printed thirteen odes entitled Vers lyriques. Olive has been supposed to be an anagram for the name of a Mlle Viole, but there is little evidence of real passion in the poems, and they may perhaps be regarded as a Petrarchan exercise, especially as, in the second edition, the dedication to his lady is exchanged for one to Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henry II. Du Bellay did not actually introduce the sonnet into French poetry, but he acclimatized it; and when the fashion of sonneteering became a mania he was one of the first to ridicule its excesses. About this time du Bellay had a serious illness of two years' duration, from which dates the beginning of his deafness. He had further anxieties in the guardianship of his nephew. The boy died in 1553, and Joachim, who had up to this time borne the title of sieur de Liré, became seigneur of Gonnor. In 1549 he had published a Recueil de poésies dedicated to the Princess Marguerite. This was followed in 1552 by a version of the fourth book of the Aeneid, with other translations and some occasional poems. In the next year he went to Rome as one of the secretaries of Cardinal du Bellay. To the beginning of his four and a half years' residence in Italy belong the forty-seven sonnets of his Antiquités de Rome, published in 1558. Sonnet III of the Antiquités, "Nouveau venu qui cherches Rome en Rome," has been shown to reflect the direct influence of a Latin poem by a Renaissance writer named Jean or Janis Vitalis. The Antiquités were rendered into English by Edmund Spenser (The Ruins of Rome, 1591), and the sonnet "Nouveau venu qui cherches Rome en Rome" was rendered into Spanish by Francisco de Quevedo ("A Roma sepultada en sus ruinas," 1650).[3] These sonnets were more personal and less imitative than the Olive sequence, and struck a note which was revived in later French literature by Volney and Chateaubriand. His stay in Rome was, however, a real exile. His duties were those of an attendant. He had to meet the cardinal's creditors and to find money for the expenses of the household. Nevertheless, he found many friends among Italian scholars, and formed a close friendship with another exiled poet whose circumstances were similar to his own, Olivier de Magny. Towards the end of his sojourn in Rome he fell violently in love with a Roman lady called Faustine, who appears in his poetry as Columba and Columbelle. This passion finds its clearest expression in the Latin poems. Faustine was guarded by an old and jealous husband, and du Bellay's eventual conquest may have had something to do with his departure for Paris at the end of August 1557. In the next year he published the poems he had brought back with him from Rome, the Latin Poemata, the Antiquités de Rome, the Divers Jeux Rustiques, and the 191 sonnets of the Regrets, the greater number of which were written in Italy. The Regrets show that he had moved away from the theories of the Défence. The simplicity and tenderness specially characteristic of du Bellay appear in the sonnets telling of his unlucky passion for Faustine, and of his nostalgia for the banks of the Loire. Among them are some satirical sonnets describing Roman manners, and the later ones written after his return to Paris are often appeals for patronage. His intimate relations with Ronsard were not renewed, but he formed a close friendship with the scholar Jean de Morel, whose house was the centre of a learned society. In 1559 du Bellay published at Poitiers La Nouvelle Manière de faire son profit des lettres, a satirical epistle translated from the Latin of Adrien Turnèbe, and with it Le Poète courtisan, which introduced the formal satire into French poetry. The Nouvelle Manière is believed to be directed at Pierre de Paschal, who was elected as royal historiographer, and who had promised to write Latin biographies of the great, but who in fact never wrote anything of the sort. Both works were published under the pseudonym of J Quintil du Troussay, and the courtier-poet was generally supposed to be Mellin de Saint-Gelais, with whom du Bellay had always, however, been on friendly terms. Last works and death[edit] A long and eloquent Discours au roi (detailing the duties of a prince, and translated from a Latin original written by Michel de l'Hôpital, now lost) was dedicated to Francis II in 1559, and is said to have secured for the poet a tardy pension, although it was not published until 1567, after his death.[1] In Paris he was still in the employ of the cardinal, who delegated to him the lay patronage which he still retained in the diocese. In the exercise of these functions Joachim quarrelled with Eustache du Bellay, bishop of Paris, who prejudiced his relations with the cardinal, less cordial since the publication of the outspoken Regrets. His chief patron, Marguerite de Valois, to whom he was sincerely attached, had gone to Savoy. Du Bellay's health was weak; his deafness seriously hindered his official duties; and on 1 January 1560 he died at the age of 38. There is no evidence that he was in priest's orders, but he was a clerk, and as such held various preferments. He had at one time been a canon of Notre Dame of Paris, and was accordingly buried in the cathedral. The statement that he was nominated archbishop of Bordeaux during the last year of life is unauthenticated by documentary evidence and is in itself extremely improbable. Bibliography[edit] The best edition of his collected works in French is still that produced by Henri Chamard in six volumes. Also, there are the Œuvres francaises (2 vols., 1866–1867), edited with introduction and notes by C. Marty-Laveaux in his Pléiade française. His Œuvres choisies were published by L. Becq de Fouquières in 1876. The chief source of his biography is his own poetry, especially the Latin elegy addressed to Jean de Morel, "Elegia ad Janum Morellum Ebredunensem, Pytadem suum," printed with a volume of Xenia (Paris, 1569). A study of his life and writings by H. Chamard, forming vol. viii. of the Travaux et mémoires de l'université de Lille (Lute, 1900), contains all the available information and corrects many common errors. References[edit] ^ a b Smith, Malcolm (1974). Joachim Du Bellay's Veiled Victim: With an Edition of the Xenia, Seu Illustrium Quorundam Nominum Allusiones. Librairie Droz. pp. 50–. ISBN 978-2-600-03901-7. ^ Jones, Colin (1994). The Cambridge Illustrated History of France (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 133. ISBN 0-521-43294-4. ^ Zarucchi, Jeanne Morgan (1997). "Du Bellay, Spenser, and Quevedo Search for Rome: A Teacher's Peregrination". The French Review. 17:2: 192–203.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Du Bellay, Joachim". Encyclopædia Britannica. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 616–617. Further reading[edit] Sainte-Beuve, Tableau de la poésie française au XVI siècle (1828) La Défense et illust. de la langue française (1905), with biographical and critical introduction by Léon Séché, who also wrote Joachim du Bellay--documents nouveaux et inédits (1880), and published in 1903 the first volume of a new edition of the Œuvres Lettres de Joachim du Bellay (1884), edited by Pierre de Nolhac Walter Pater, "Joachim du Bellay", essay in The Renaissance (1873) [1] pp. 155–176 George Wyndham, Ronsard and La Pléiade (1906) Hilaire Belloc, Avril (1905) Arthur Tilley, The Literature of the French Renaissance (2 vols., 1904). Ursula Hennigfeld, Der ruinierte Körper. Petrarkistische Sonette in transkultureller Perspektive. Königshausen & Neuman, Würzburg (2008). External links[edit] Works by or about Joachim du Bellay at Internet Archive Works by Joachim du Bellay at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Biography, Bibliography, Analysis (in French) University of Virginia's Gordon Project A 1569 edition of du Bellay's works and background information The first complete translation into English of Du Bellay's Antiquités de Rome since Spenser Lyrics of the French Renaissance: Marot, Du Bellay, Ronsard By Norman R. Shapiro - (in French and English) - Google books Authority control BIBSYS: 90077184 BNE: XX1721244 BNF: cb123220047 (data) CANTIC: a11398450 GND: 118527649 ICCU: IT\ICCU\CFIV\074850 ISNI: 0000 0001 2278 5556 LCCN: n50047295 LNB: 000085095 MBA: 777c52d9-615b-4d03-893a-a26801918571 NDL: 00551903 NKC: jn19981000776 NLA: 35046440 NLI: 000411298 NSK: 000127993 NTA: 070354405 SELIBR: 210860 SNAC: w6p26zk6 SUDOC: 032130759 Trove: 811032 VcBA: 495/19085 VIAF: 39447168 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n50047295 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joachim_du_Bellay&oldid=992682469" Categories: 1520s births 1560 deaths People from Maine-et-Loire 16th-century male writers 16th-century Latin-language writers University of Poitiers alumni Clerks French Renaissance New Latin-language poets Sonneteers 16th-century French poets French male poets Du Bellay family Hidden categories: Articles needing additional references from November 2018 All articles needing additional references Articles lacking in-text citations from February 2012 All articles lacking in-text citations Articles with multiple maintenance issues Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Articles with Internet Archive links Articles with LibriVox links Articles with French-language sources (fr) Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ICCU identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NSK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers Wikipedia articles with VcBA identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikisource Languages العربية Asturianu تۆرکجه Беларуская Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎ Български Čeština Cymraeg Dansk Deutsch Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français 한국어 हिन्दी Hrvatski Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית Қазақша Latina Magyar Македонски مازِرونی Nederlands 日本語 Norsk bokmål Polski Português Română Русский کوردی Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska Türkçe Українська Tiếng Việt 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 6 December 2020, at 15:31 (UTC). 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