Tahureau, Jacques (1527-55). One of the more famous members of the group of humanist writers based in Poitiers (others were Bouchet, La Péruse). His collections of neo-Petrarchan poetry (Premières poésies, Sonnets, odes et mignardises amoureuses de l'Admirée, 1554) are now beginning to receive serious critical attention; but he is still best known for the posthumous Dialogues (1565), in which Démocritic (who shuns society) and Cosmophile (who is less critical) debate the follies of the world: love, the court, law, medicine, astrology—and, more dangerously, ‘les forgerons de dieux’. Tahureau claims to exclude Christianity from his strictures; but his comments may be no more than a defensive measure (an absolute requirement at a period when atheism was punishable by death). The ambiguity shows how well he exploited the dialogue as a genre.
[James Supple]
