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Pierre de
Ronsard |
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Pierre Ronsard (1524-85) was the central figure
of the French
poetry renaissance and perhaps the greatest French lyrical
poet before Hugo. Like his father, Ronsard
was attached to court, and served on various missions, including
two to Scotland in the service of Madeleine de France and
Marie
de Guise. Increasing deafness caused him to withdraw
from diplomacy and for seven years to study literature and
the classical authors. With du
Bellay and Baïf,
Ronsard attended the Collège
de Coqueret, publishing his first collection of Odes
in 1550, his Amours in 1552 and his Hymnes
in 1555-6. The first
Odes were modelled on Pindar, and somewhat pedantic,
but his later work fused mythology and nature in a spring-like
expression of tenderness and lyricism. Ronsard became the
most celebrated poet of Europe, achieving for his fellow
practitioners the recognition of poet as vates or
seer.
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Ronsard's poetry |
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Ronsard was a prolific writer who produced six editions
of his work between 1560 and 1584, plus countless occasional
pieces. The most important publications were: Les Amours
de Cassandre (2 books of sonnets, Paris, 1550), Odes
(5 books, Paris, 1551-1552), Le Bocage Royal (Paris,
1554), Les Hymnes (2 books, Paris, 1556), Poèmes
(2 books, Paris, 1560-73), Discours sur les Misères du
Temps (1560) and La Franciade (Paris, 1572).
However lively and charming to his contemporaries, the work
did not measure up to the strict demands of French classicism,
and Ronsard's achievements were overlooked for three centuries.
To our ears, however, the poetry is immensely varied
simple, sublime, tender and ironic often taking its
inspiration from women who seemed to have been both real
and imagined.
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Ronsard
and the Pléiades |
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So strict became the rules of French prosody that lyrical
poetry was all but extinguished between the 16th and 19th
centuries. The exuberance of renaissance verse was particularly
censured, and poetry greatly narrowed in its language
(though not its themes). Beside the point, therefore, that
Ronsard enriched the French vocabulary with borrowings from
Greek and Latin, the old romance dialects and the technical
languages of trades, sports, and sciences. Or that he invented
a large variety of metres, adopted the regular intertwining
of masculine and feminine rhymes, and introduced harmony
in French verse. Ronsard was rediscovered in the early 20th
century, inspiring many
translations notably Yeat's When
you are old.
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Books and Internet resources |
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Ronsard's French is not modern, but readily understood with
application and a simple glossary. It predates classical verse,
but is nonetheless built on syllabic
subtleties that take some time to appreciate. A brief but
rather technical introduction to French prosody is to be found
in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
(1993). Better is On Reading French Verse by R. Lewis
(1982), or these works by C. Scott: French Verse-Art A
Study (1980), A Question of Syllables (1986), and
The Riches of Rhyme (1988). I. Silver's Ronsard
and the Hellenic Renaissance in France (2 vols, 1961 &
1987) is for specialists. Ronsard's poetry can be found at
poésie
française, lepg.org
and extensive resources (in French) at calliope.
A good selection French poetry generally is provided by poésie
and poésie
sur la toile.
Books, tapes
and CDs can help you learn the language, and if you've forgotten
your school French, then there exist many
courses and learning
centres. Students of French literature may find these
sources useful: French
Civilisation, Early
Modern French Literature, NASSFCL, CCDSTSI and French
Library. |
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