La Pléiade
Encyclopedia
The Pléiade is the name given to a group of 16th-century French Renaissance
French Renaissance
French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...

 poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

s whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...

, Joachim du Bellay
Joachim du Bellay
Joachim du Bellay was a French poet, critic, and a member of the Pléiade.-Biography:He was born at the Château 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.Both his parents...

 and Jean-Antoine de Baïf
Jean-Antoine de Baïf
Jean Antoine de Baïf was a French poet and member of the Pléiade.-Life:He was born in Venice, the natural son of the scholar Lazare de Baïf, who was at that time French ambassador at Venice...

. The name was a reference to another literary group, the original Alexandrian Pleiad
Alexandrian Pleiad
The Alexandrian Pleiad is the name given to a group of seven Alexandrian poets and tragedians in the 3rd century BC working in the court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus...

 of seven Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

n poets and tragedians (3rd century B.C.), corresponding to the seven stars of the Pleiades
Pleiades (star cluster)
In astronomy, the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters , is an open star cluster containing middle-aged hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky...

 star cluster
Star cluster
Star clusters or star clouds are groups of stars. Two types of star clusters can be distinguished: globular clusters are tight groups of hundreds of thousands of very old stars which are gravitationally bound, while open clusters, more loosely clustered groups of stars, generally contain less than...

. The name "Pléiade" was also adopted in 1323 by a group of fourteen poets (seven men and seven women) in Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

.

Major figures

Notable members of "La Pléiade" consisted of the following people:
  • Pierre de Ronsard
    Pierre de Ronsard
    Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...

  • Joachim du Bellay
    Joachim du Bellay
    Joachim du Bellay was a French poet, critic, and a member of the Pléiade.-Biography:He was born at the Château 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.Both his parents...

  • Jean-Antoine de Baïf
    Jean-Antoine de Baïf
    Jean Antoine de Baïf was a French poet and member of the Pléiade.-Life:He was born in Venice, the natural son of the scholar Lazare de Baïf, who was at that time French ambassador at Venice...



The core group of the French Renaissance
French Renaissance
French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...

 "Pléiade"—Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf—were young French poets who met at the Collège de Coqueret, where they studied under the famous Hellenist and Latinist scholar Jean Dorat
Jean Daurat
Jean Daurat was a French poet, scholar, and a member of a group known as The Pléiade.-Early life:...

; they were generally called the "Brigade" at the time. Ronsard was regarded as the leader of the "Brigade", and remained the most popular and well-known poet of the group. The Pleiade's 'manifesto' was penned by Joachim Du Bellay ( 1549). In it, Du Bellay detailed a literary program of renewal and revolution. The group aimed to break with earlier traditions of French poetry (especially Marot
Clément Marot
Clément Marot was a French poet of the Renaissance period.-Youth:Marot was born at Cahors, the capital of the province of Quercy, some time during the winter of 1496-1497. His father, Jean Marot , whose more correct name appears to have been des Mares, Marais or Marets, was a Norman from the Caen...

 and the grands rhétoriqueurs
Grands Rhétoriqueurs
The Grands Rhétoriqueurs or simply the "Rhétoriqueurs" is the name given to a group of poets from 1460 to 1520 working in Northern France, Flanders and the Duchy of Burgundy whose ostentatious poetic production was dominated by an extremely rich rhyme scheme and experimentation with assonance...

), and, maintaining that French (like the Tuscan of Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...

 and Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...

) was a worthy language for literary expression, to attempt to ennoble the French language by imitating the Ancients.

To this end Du Bellay recommended vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

 innovation of Greek and Roman poetic forms, emulation of specific models, and the creation of neologisms based on Greek and Latin. Among the models favoured by the Pléiade were Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...

, Anacreon, Alcaeus
Alcaeus
Alcaeus may refer to:*Alcaeus , a writer of ten plays of the Old Comedy.*Alcaeus , one of several figures of this name in Greek mythology*12607 Alcaeus - a main belt asteroid...

 and other poets of the Greek Anthology
Greek Anthology
The Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature...

, as well as Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

, Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

 and Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

. The ideal was not one of slavish imitation, but of a poet so well-versed in the entire corpus of Ancient literature (Du Bellay uses the metaphor of 'digestion') that he would be able to convert it into an entirely new and rich poetic language in the vernacular
Vernacular literature
Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin...

. For some of the members of the Pléiade, the act of the poetry itself was seen as a form of divine inspiration (see Pontus de Tyard
Pontus de Tyard
Pontus de Tyard was a French poet and priest, a member of "La Pléiade".He was born at Bissy-sur-Fley in Burgundy, of which he was seigneur, but the exact year of his birth is uncertain. He became a friend of Antoine Héroet and Maurice Scève...

 for example), a possession by the muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...

s akin to romantic passion, prophetic fervor or alcoholic delirium.

The forms that dominate the poetic production of these poets are the Petrarchan sonnet cycle
Sonnet cycle
A sonnet cycle is a group of sonnets, arranged to address a particular person or theme, and designed to be read both as a collection of fully realized individual poems and as a single poetic work comprising all the individual sonnets....

 (developed around an amorous encounter or an idealized woman) and the Horatian/Anacreontic ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...

 (of the 'wine, women and song' variety, often making use of the Horatian carpe diem
Carpe diem
Carpe diem is a phrase from a Latin poem by Horace that has become an aphorism. It is popularly translated as "seize the day"...

topos - life is short, seize the day). Ronsard also tried early on to adapt the Pindaric ode into French and, later, to write a nationalist verse epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

 modelled on Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 and Virgil (entitled the Franciade
Franciade
In the French Republican calendar, the franciade was the period of four years at the end of which it was necessary to add a day to the calendar year to keep it aligned with the solar year ....

), which he never completed. Throughout the period, the use of mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

 is frequent, but so too is a depiction of the natural world (woods, rivers).

Minor figures

Minor figures also associated with this term include the following:
  • Pontus de Tyard
    Pontus de Tyard
    Pontus de Tyard was a French poet and priest, a member of "La Pléiade".He was born at Bissy-sur-Fley in Burgundy, of which he was seigneur, but the exact year of his birth is uncertain. He became a friend of Antoine Héroet and Maurice Scève...

  • Étienne Jodelle
    Étienne Jodelle
    Étienne Jodelle, seigneur de Limodin , French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris of a noble family.He attached himself to the poetic circle of the Pléiade and proceeded to apply the principles of the reformers to dramatic composition...

  • Rémy Belleau
    Remy Belleau
    Remy Belleau , was a poet of the French Renaissance. He is most known for his paradoxical poems of praise for simple things and his poems about precious stones....

  • Jacques Pelletier du Mans
  • Jean de la Péruse
  • Guillaume des Autels


The use of the term "Pléiade" to refer to the group the French poets around Ronsard and Du Bellay is much criticized. In his poems, Ronsard frequently made lists of those he considered the best poets of his generation, but these lists changed several times. These lists always included Ronsard, Du Bellay, de Baïf, Pontus de Tyard
Pontus de Tyard
Pontus de Tyard was a French poet and priest, a member of "La Pléiade".He was born at Bissy-sur-Fley in Burgundy, of which he was seigneur, but the exact year of his birth is uncertain. He became a friend of Antoine Héroet and Maurice Scève...

 and Étienne Jodelle
Étienne Jodelle
Étienne Jodelle, seigneur de Limodin , French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris of a noble family.He attached himself to the poetic circle of the Pléiade and proceeded to apply the principles of the reformers to dramatic composition...

; the last two positions were taken by Rémy Belleau
Remy Belleau
Remy Belleau , was a poet of the French Renaissance. He is most known for his paradoxical poems of praise for simple things and his poems about precious stones....

, Jacques Pelletier du Mans, Jean de la Péruse, or Guillaume des Autels. In a poem in 1556 Ronsard announced that the "Brigade" had become the "Pléiade", but apparently no one in Ronsard's literary circle used the expression to refer to himself, and use of the term stems principally from Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

 poets critical of Ronsard's pretensions (Ronsard was a polemicist for the royal Catholic policy). This use was finally consecrated by Ronsard's biographer Claude Binet, shortly after the poet's death. Some modern literary historians reject the use of the term, as it gives precedence to Ronsard's poetic ideas and minimizes the diversity of poetic production in the French Renaissance.

The 14th century Toulouse Pléiade

Male poets:
  • Bernart de Panassac
    Bernart de Panassac
    Bernart de Panassac was the minor lord of Arrouède and one of the last troubadours. He founded the Consistori del Gay Saber in Toulouse and was a member of the Pléiade. He composed one vers in honour of the Virgin Mary and one canso...

  • Guillaume de Lobra
  • Béringuier de Saint-Plancart
  • Pierre de Mejanaserra
  • Guillaume de Gontaut
  • Pierre Camo
  • Bernard Oth


Female poets:
  • Catherine Fontaine
  • Bernarde Deupie
  • Claude Ligonne
  • Audiette Peschaira
  • Esclarmonde Spinète
  • Johanne Perle
  • Françoise Marie (later replaced by Paule de Viguier)

See also

  • French poetry
    French poetry
    French poetry is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.-French prosody and poetics:...

  • Castalian Band
    Castalian Band
    The Castalian Band was a group of Scottish Jacobean poets, or makars, which flourished between the 1580s and early 1590s in the court of James VI and was consciously modelled on the French example of the Pléiade. Its name is derived from the classical term Castalian Spring, a symbol for poetic...

  • "La Pléiade", or more correctly "La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade
    Bibliothèque de la Pléiade
    The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade is a French series of books which was created in the 1930s by Jacques Schiffrin, an independent young editor. . Schiffrin wanted to provide the public with reference editions of the complete works of classic authors in a pocket format...

    ", is also the name of a prestigious leather-bound Bible-paper collection of works in French (literature, history, etc.) published by the Éditions Gallimard
    Éditions Gallimard
    Éditions Gallimard is one of the leading French publishers of books. The Guardian has described it as having "the best backlist in the world". In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1418 titles....

    publishing house.
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