la Pléiade

Pléiade, la [play‐ahd], the name given to an important group of 16th‐century French poets led by Pierre de Ronsard. The name, taken from the constellation of seven stars known in English as the Pleiades, had formerly been applied to a group of Greek Alexandrian poets; Ronsard himself adopted it for his group in 1556. The group of seven comprised Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Pontus de Tyard, Jean‐Antoine de Baïf, Etienne Jodelle, Remy Belleau, and either Jacques Peletier or Jean Dorat (according to differing lists). Devoted students of the Greek and Latin classics, the poets of the Pléiade were nevertheless strongly committed to developing the French language as a medium for major poetry. Rejecting the popular traditions and forms of medieval verse, they transformed French poetry by establishing the alexandrine as the major verse line, and by introducing the ode and the sonnet into the language. Their most important manifestos are Du Bellay's Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse (1549) and Ronsard's Preface to his Odes (1550).

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French Literature Companion: La Pléiade

Pléiade, La. Name traditionally given to a constellation of seven poets active from 1549 to 1589 who, under the leadership of Ronsard, endowed French poetry with a new dignity consistent with humanist principles, The group, which initially called itself the ‘Brigade’, never had the tight organization of a ‘school’: even its membership fluctuated, for if the names of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Baïf, Tyard, and Jodelle remain constant, the two remaining places were occupied, according to texts of Ronsard, firstly by Des Autels and La Péruse (1553) and later by Peletier and Belleau (1555, 1556). Binet, in his biography of Ronsard (1586), replaces Peletier by Dorat, who, as principal of the Collège de Coqueret, was responsible from 1547 for the education of Ronsard, Baïf, and Du Bellay. The other Parisian college closely associated with the formation of the new poetic movement was Boncourt, where members and associates of the future Pléiade (Jodelle, Belleau, La Péruse, Grévin) received their education from Muret and Buchanan. Other figures, like Denisot, Garnier, Magny, and Jamyn, gravitated round the nucleus of the group.

The ideals of the Pléiade, as expressed in the Defense et illustration (1549) and in subsequent poems and theoretical statements, focused on the renewal of a national poetic language, to be achieved by the creative imitation of Greco-Roman and Italian sources [see Classical Influences; Italian Influences]. Importance was accorded to poetic technique and, especially, to inspiration, often described in Neoplatonist terms as a ‘divine madness’. Erudite, virtuous, and assured of immortality, the poet is considered as a prophet, an intermediary between the gods and man, an interpreter of divine secrets and the mysteries of the universe. Aware of the elevated status of poetry and of their mission, and conscious of their role as innovators, the new movement was at first unjustly dismissive of previous ous French poetry, relegating even its best exponents (including Clément Marot) to an outworn medieval tradition and rejecting its genres in favour of the models and forms of classical antiquity (ode, epic, elegy, eclogue, epigram, satire, tragic and comic theatre) and Italy (sonnet).

The legacy left by the Pléiade was considerable. They acclimatized in France many of the genres they inherited (including the sonnet), they imposed their presence in a wide diversity of fields—love poetry, religious, scientific, satirical, political, and official verse, tragedy, comedy, the pastoral, and the epic—and were equally innovative and influential in matters of metre, rhyme, and versification and in theories concerning the nature and function of poetry. [See also Petrarchism].

[Malcolm Quainton]

Bibliography

H. Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade (1939-40)
G. Castor, Pléiade Poetics (1964)
Y. Bellenger, La Pléiade. La Poésie en France autour de Ronsard (1988)

Wikipedia: la Pléiade

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The Pléiade is the name given to 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. The name "Pléiade" was also adopted in 1323 by a group of fourteen poets (seven men and seven women) in Toulouse.

The 14th century Toulouse Pléiade

Male poets:

Bernard de Panassac
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)

The French Renaissance Pléiade

The core group of the Renaissance "Pléiade" -- Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf -- came together at the Collège de Coqueret under the tutelege of the famous Hellenist and Latinist Jean Dorat and were generally called the "Brigade". Ronsard was regarded as the leader of the "Brigade", but their 'manifesto' was penned by Du Bellay ('La Défense et illustration de la langue française' 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 and the grands rhétoriqueurs), and, maintaining that French (like the Tuscan of Petrarch and Dante) 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 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, Anacreon, Alcaeus and other poets of the Greek Anthology, as well as Virgil, Horace and Ovid. 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. For some of the members of the Pléiade, the act of the poety itself was seen as a form of divine inspiration (see Pontus de Tyard for example), a possession by the muses akin to romantic passion, prophetic fervor or alcoholic delirium.

The forms that dominate the poetic production of these poets are the Petrarchan sonnet cycle (developed around an amorous encounter or an idealized woman) and the Horatian/Anacreontic ode (of the 'wine, women and song' variety, often making use of the Horatian "carpe diem" 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 modelled on Homer and Virgil (entitled the Franciade), which he never completed. Throughout the period, the use of mythology is frequent, but so too is a depiction of the natural world (woods, rivers).

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 and Étienne Jodelle; the last two positions were taken by Rémy Belleau, Jacques Peletier 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 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.

References

Simonin, Michel, ed. Dictionnaire des lettres françaises - Le XVIe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 2001.

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la Pléiade

The 14th century Toulouse Pléiade

The French Renaissance Pléiade

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		Literary Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Copyright © Chris Baldick 2001, 2004. All rights reserved. Read more
		French Literature Companion. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "La Pléiade". Read more