Du Bellay, Joachim

Born 1522, in Lire, Anjou; died Jan. 1, 1560, in Paris. French poet.

Du Bellay was a member of the Pléiade and author of the group’s manifesto, The Defense and Illustration of the French Language (1549), which charted a course for the development of French poetry: the assimilation of new genres, enrichment of the language, and imitation of the classical poets and the poets of Italy, including Petrarch. Du Bellay’s early works—the collection of sonnets Olive (1549-50) and the collection of odes Lyrical Poems (1549)—reflected these literary principles. His enthusiasm for imitations and Platonist ideas, however, led to his break with national poetic traditions. The poems written after 1553 are less imitative of the Petrarchan style. From 1553 to 1557 he lived in Rome, where he wrote his best works, the collections of sonnets Roman Antiquities and Regrets and the collection of odes and elegies Rustic Games (all three were published in 1558). The poems in Regrets reveal unusual psychological sensitivity and lyricism in conveying the thoughts and feelings of a progressive man of the age, his reflections on his epoch, and his faith in historical progress despite his sense of the impending crisis of Renaissance culture.