Joachim du Bellay
born c. 1522, Liré, Fr.
died Jan. 1, 1560, Paris
French poet, leader with Pierre de
Ronsard of the literary group known as
La Pléiade. Du Bellay is the author of
the Pléiade’s manifesto, La Défense et
illustration de la langue française (The
Defence & Illustration of the French
Language).
Du Bellay was born into a noble
family of the Loire River valley, and he
studied law and the humanities in
Poitiers and Paris. He published The
Defence & Illustration of the French
Language in 1549. In it he asserted that
French is capable of producing a modern
literature equal in quality and
expressiveness to that of ancient Greece
and Rome. He argued that French writers
should look not only to Classical texts
but also to contemporary Italy for
literary models. In 1549–50 du Bellay
published his first sonnets, inspired by
the Italian poet Petrarch.
In 1553 he went with his cousin Jean
du Bellay, a prominent cardinal and
diplomat, on a mission to Rome. By this
time Joachim du Bellay 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 His portraits show a withdrawn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 in
Complaints . . . (1591).
