Ronsard, Pierre De

Ronsard, Pierre de (pyĕr də rôNsär`), 1524–1585, French poet. As page, then squire, Ronsard seemed destined for a career at court both in France and abroad. However, deafness turned him to a more secluded and studious life at the Collège de Coqueret where he became leader of the Pléiade (see under Pleiad). Named poet royal, he wrote a great number of poems on many themes, especially patriotism, love, and death: sonnets on Petrarch, odes after Pindar and Horace, elegies, eclogues, and songs. Of his love poems the best-known appear in Sonnets pour Hélène (1578; tr. by Humbert Wolfe, 1934). Ronsard's most ambitious effort was La Franciade (1572), an unfinished epic. He also wrote (1562) two long patriotic poems deploring the Wars of Religion. Ronsard's reputation was long in eclipse, but after Sainte-Beuve's favorable criticism he assumed his place as one of the greatest of French poets.

Bibliography

See Songs and Sonnets of Pierre de Ronsard (tr. 1924); biography by M. Bishop (1940); studies by I. Silver (1961 and 1971) and B. R. Leslie (1979).

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Ronsard, Pierre de

(born Sept. 11, 1524, La Possonnière, near Couture, France—died Dec. 27, 1585, Saint-Cosme, near Tours) French poet. Of a noble family, Ronsard turned to scholarship and literature after an illness left him partially deaf. He was the foremost poet of La Pléiade, a literary group that used Classical and Italian models to elevate the French language as a medium for literary expression. He was recognized in his lifetime as a prince of poets; among his diverse works were Odes (1550), inspired by Horace; Les Amours (1552); the unfinished La Franciade (1572), in imitation of Virgil's Aeneid, meant to be the national epic; and Sonnets pour Hélène, now perhaps his most famous collection. He perfected and established the alexandrine as the classic form in French for scathing satire, elegiac tenderness, and tragic passion.

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Ronsard, Pierre De 

Born Sept. 11, 1524, in the Château de la Poissonnière, in Vendôme; died Dec. 27, 1585, in the abbey of Saint Cosme-sur-Loire, Touraine. French poet. Leader of the Pléiade.

In his Odes (1550–52), in which he imitated Pindar and Horace, Ronsard spoke of the lofty role of literature and propounded a theory of poetic inspiration. The odes combined patriotism and glorification of the joys of existence, nature, and love. The collection of sonnets and songs Poems of Love (1552–53) was influenced by Petrarchianism. In the cycles of sonnets (1555–56) dedicated to the peasant girl Marie Dupin, Ronsard described lyric feelings simply and naturally.

Ronsard’s philosophic interests were reflected in Hymns (1555, 1556), in which the poet reflected on life and death, the vagaries of fate, and moral duty. Religious motifs were developed in the political poems Discourses on the Troubles of the Times (1560–62). Ronsard summarized his theoretical views in Summary of the Art of Poetry (1565). In the cycle Sonnets for Helen (1578) he strove to attain classical clarity and balance, but the sonnets remained somewhat mannered.

Ronsard’s work encompassed almost all the lyric and epic genres of his time, from the heroic epic (La Franciade, 1572) to the intimate lyric. He influenced the entire development of French poetry of the second half of the 16th century and poets of other countries as well.

WORKS

Oeuvres complètes, vols. 1–18. Paris, 1914–67 (in course of publication).
Oeuvres complètes [vols. 1–2. Paris, 1958].
In Russian translation:
Ronsar. Translated by S. V. Shervinskii. Moscow, 1926.
Lirika. Translated by V. Levik. Moscow, 1963.

REFERENCES

Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1946.
Champion, P. Ronsard et son temps. Paris, 1925.
Laumonier, P. Ronsard poète lyrique, 3rd ed. Paris, 1932.
Desonay, F. Ronsard, poète de l’amour, books 1–3, Brussels, 1952–59.
Terreaux, L. Ronsard. Geneva, 1968.
Dassonville, M. Ronsard, vols. 1–2. Geneva, 1968–70.
Spaziani, M. L. Ronsardfra gli astri delle Pléiade. Turin, 1972.
Ronsard the Poet. London [1973].

A. D. MIKHAILOV