Marot, Clément

Marot, Clément (klāmiN` mirō`), 1496?–1544, French court poet. His graceful rondeaux, ballades and epigrams won him the patronage of Francis I and Margaret of Navarre. Marot was imprisoned for Reformationist heresy in 1526 and based his superb allegorical satire Enfer on the experience. Exiled from France for his Calvinist sympathies, he could not stay in Geneva for want of "proper" devotion and died in Turin alone and abandoned. His work is distinguished by its graceful use of traditional forms. He translated the Psalms into French for the Geneva Psalter (see hymn).

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Marot, Clément

Clément Marot, oil painting by an unknown artist; in the Bibliothèque Protestante, …

(credit: E. Bulloz)

(born 1496?, Cahors, France—died September 1544, Turin, Savoy) French poet. While imprisoned in 1526 for defying Lenten abstinence regulations, he wrote some of his best-known works, including “The Inferno,” an allegorical satire on justice. He held several court posts; his long service to Francis I was only briefly interrupted. One of the greatest poets of the French Renaissance, he markedly influenced the style of his successors with his use of the forms and imagery of Latin poetry. When not writing official court poems, he spent most of his time translating the Psalms.

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Marot, Clément 

Born 1496, in Cahors; died Sept. 10, 1544, in Turin. French poet. Son of the poet-rhetorician J. Marot.

Along with F. Rabelais, Marot was the most important figure of the early Renaissance in France. He gained success as a court poet, at first (from 1518) in the service of Marguerite d’Angouleme (Margaret of Navarre), and later of Francis I (from 1526). Marot’s court verses are unusually light and elegant for their time. His sympathy with the Reformation led to his persecution by the Catholic Church. At the same time, the poet’s life-affirming humanism went beyond the limits of Protestant ideology.

Marot’s Epistles, highly diverse in their genre nuances, occupy a central place in his legacy. He was an outstanding satirist who strongly condemned the reactionary camp, for example, in his narrative poem Hell (1526) and in his satirical epistles. He drew heavily upon popular literary tradition, from the song (in his love lyrics) to the fabliau, farce, and sotie. Marot combined the poetic traditions of the past (including F. Villon) with the latest achievements of humanistic culture. During his sojourn in Italy from 1534 to 1536, Marot became interested in Italian Petrarchism and classical literature. In the mid-1530’s, patriotic and civic motifs became more pronounced in his creative work, and a search for larger forms, to a certain extent anticipating the future achievements of the Pleiade, became evident.

Marot’s translations of the Psalms, on which he began work in the 1530’s, played an important role in the ensuing flowering of the French ode. M. Regnier, V. Voiture, J. de La Fontaine, and Voltaire were influenced by Marot, whose writings contain many signs of the emerging French national character.

WORKS

Oeuvres, vols. 1-5. Edited by C. A. Mayer. London, 1958-70.
In Russian translation:
Bliumenfel’d, V. M. Poety frantsuzskogo Vozrozhdeniia. Leningrad, 1938.
Khrestomatiia po zarubezhnoi literature: Epokha Vozrozhdeniia, vol. 1. Compiled by B. I. Purishev. Moscow, 1959.

REFERENCES

Shishmarev, V. F. Kleman Maro. Petrograd, 1915.
Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1946. Pages 225-32.
Plattard, J. Cl. Marot. Paris, 1938.
Vianey, J. Les Epitres de Marot. Paris, 1962.
Smith, P. M. C. Marot: Poet of the French Renaissance. London, 1970.
Mayer, C. A. Bibliographic des oeuvres de Cl. Marot, vols. 1-2. Geneva, 1954.

IU. B. VIPPER