La Pléiade

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "La Pléiade" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

La Pléiade (French pronunciation: [la plejad]) was a group of 16th-century French Renaissance poets whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf. The name was a reference to another literary group, the original Alexandrian Pleiad of seven Alexandrian poets and tragedians (3rd century B.C.), corresponding to the seven stars of the Pleiades star cluster.

Major figures

Notable members of "La Pléiade" consisted of the following people:

• Pierre de Ronsard
• Joachim du Bellay
• Jean-Antoine de Baïf

The core group of the

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

To this end du Bellay recommended

akin to romantic passion, prophetic fervour or alcoholic delirium.

The forms that dominate the poetic production of these poets are the Petrarchan

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

• 
  Pierre de Ronsard
• 
  Joachim Du Bellay
• 
  Jean-Antoine de Baïf
• 
  Pontus de Tyard
• 
  Étienne Jodelle

Minor figures

Minor figures also associated with this term include the following:

• Pontus de Tyard
• Étienne Jodelle
• Rémy Belleau
• Jacques Pelletier du Mans
• Jean de la Péruse
• Guillaume des Autels

Use of the term

The use of the term "Pléiade" to refer to the group the French poets around Ronsard and Du Bellay is much criticised. 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,

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 minimises the diversity of poetic production in the French Renaissance.

See also

• French poetry
• Castalian Band

Notes

• "La Pléiade", or more correctly "La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade", is also the name of a prestigious leather-bound Bible-paper collection of works in French (literature, history, etc.) published by the Éditions Gallimard publishing house.

References

• Simonin, Michel, ed. Dictionnaire des lettres françaises. Le XVIe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 2001.
  ISBN 2-253-05663-4
  . (in French)