La Pléiade

This article is about French poetry. For other uses see Pleiades or Bibliothèque de la Pléiade

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 French Renaissance Pléiade

Major figures

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

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).

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

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 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 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

Main article: Consistori del Gay Saber

Male poets:

• Bernart 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)

References

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

See also

• French poetry
• Castalian Band
• "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.