Clément Marot
born 1496?, Cahors, Fr.
died September 1544, Turin, Savoy [now
in Italy]
one of the greatest poets of the
French Renaissance, whose use of the
forms and imagery of Latin poetry had
marked influence on the style of his
successors. His father, Jean, was a poet
and held a post at the court of Anne de
Bretagne and later served Francis I.
In 1514 Marot became page to Nicolas de
Neufville, seigneur de Villeroi,
secretary to the king. Wishing to follow
in his father’s footsteps by obtaining a
place as court poet, he entered the
service of Margaret of Angoulême, sister
of Francis I and later queen of Navarre.
On his father’s death, he became valet
de chambre to Francis I, a post he held,
except for his years of exile (1534–36),
until 1542.
Marot was arrested in 1526 for
defying Lenten abstinence regulations,
behaviour that put him under suspicion
of being a Lutheran. A short
imprisonment inspired some of his
best-known works, especially “L’Enfer”
(“The Inferno”), an allegorical satire
on justice, and an epistle to his friend
Lyon Jamet (1526). In 1527 he was again
imprisoned, this time for attacking a
prison guard and freeing a prisoner; an
epistle, addressed to the king and
begging for his deliverance, won his
release. In 1531 Marot was again
arrested for eating meat during Lent,
but this time he avoided imprisonment.
By 1530, in any event, his fame had
become firmly established, and his many
poems seem to have enjoyed a wide
circulation.
After the Affaire des Placards, when
placards attacking the Mass were posted
in the major cities and on the door of
the king’s bedchamber (1534), Marot fled
to Navarre, where he was protected by
Margaret. When persecution of the
Protestants increased, he again fled,
this time to the court of Renée de
France in Ferrara, Italy. Marot
subsequently returned to Paris in 1537
after Francis I had stopped the
persecutions.
When he was not engaged in writing
the official poems that his duties at
the French court compelled him to write,
Marot spent most of his time translating
the Psalms; a first edition of some of
these appeared in 1539, the Trente
Pseaulmes de Davíd in 1542. These
translations were notable for their
sober and solemn musicality. Their
condemnation by the Sorbonne caused
Marot to go into exile again. But they
were greatly admired by John Calvin, who
gave Marot sanctuary in Geneva. Marot’s
behaviour became unacceptable in that
strict and sober city, however, and he
was forced to return to Italy.
Although Marot’s early poems were
composed entirely in the style of the
late medieval poets known as
rhétoriqueurs, he soon abandoned the
established genres of that school as
well as its conceits, its didactic use
of allegory, and its complicated
versification. Instead, his knowledge of
the Latin classics and his contacts with
Italian literary forms enabled him to
learn to imitate the styles and themes
of antiquity. He introduced the elegy,
the eclogue, the epigram, the
epithalamium (nuptial poem), and the
one-stanza Italian satiric strambotto
(French estrabot) into French poetry,
and he was one of the first French poets
to attempt the Petrarchan sonnet form.
His epigrams and epistolary poems
(épîtres), in particular, display those
qualities of wit, intellectual
refinement, and sincerity and
naturalness that were to characterize
the French use of these genres for the
next two centuries. He was also a master
of the chant royal and infused some
Horatian wit into the old forms of the
ballade and the rondeau.
Marot attempted to create new or to
improve existing lyrical forms,
composing chansons and cantiques and
originating the blason (1536), a satiric
verse describing, as a rule, some aspect
of the female body in minute detail. The
blason found immediate popularity and
was so widely imitated that it was
possible to publish an anthology in
1555. Marot translated Catullus, Virgil,
and Ovid and edited the works of
François Villon and the Roman de la
rose. He added grace, elegance, and
personal warmth to French light verse.
Much of his achievement was temporarily
eclipsed by La Pléiade, a group of poets
who dominated the literary scene for a
period shortly after his death. But the
influence of Marot was evident in
England among the Elizabethans, notably
Edmund Spenser, and was revived in
France in the 17th century.
