French Literature Companion:
Thomas Sebillet
Sebillet, Thomas (1512-89) published L'Art poétique français in 1548, one year before Du Bellay's Défense et illustration, apparently intending to forestall it. Sebillet's poetic manifesto combines a humanist conception of the poet's divine calling and inspiration with practical technical recommendations about verse-forms, rhythms, rhyme, and language. He belongs rather to Clément Marot's generation and looks back to the late Middle Ages, but also relies on Horace, Cicero, and Quintilian. In 1549, adapting Greek metres to French, he published a French translation of the Iphigenia of Euripides, an author made familiar by the Latin versions of Erasmus and Buchanan.
[Peter Sharratt]
