author
Joachim Du Bellay
d. 1560
A leading voice of the French Renaissance, this poet helped argue that French could stand beside Greek and Latin as a great literary language. His sonnets move between grand cultural ambition and a strikingly personal homesickness.
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About the author
Born around 1522 in Liré, in Anjou, Joachim du Bellay became one of the central poets of the French Renaissance. He is closely linked with La Pléiade, the circle of poets that also included Pierre de Ronsard, and he wrote its famous manifesto, La Défense et illustration de la langue française (1549), which called for the enrichment of French as a serious literary language.
Du Bellay studied law at Poitiers, where he met Ronsard, and later traveled to Rome with his cousin, the cardinal Jean du Bellay, in 1553. That Roman stay shaped some of his best-known writing: instead of idealizing court life, he often wrote with disappointment, irony, and longing for home. His collections Les Regrets and Les Antiquités de Rome are especially remembered for that mix of sharp observation and emotional depth.
He died in Paris on January 1, 1560. Though his life was short, his work had a lasting influence on French poetry, both for its defense of the French language and for the way it joined classical learning with an intimate, human voice.