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Article: Letters from home: the epistolary aspects of Joachim Du Bellay's 'Les Regrets.'.
- Article from:
- Renaissance Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 22, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 The Renaissance Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Les Regrets, a collection of sonnets composed by the poet Joachim Du Bellay during a four-year stay in Rome from 1553 to 1557, while he served as secretary and intendant to his second cousin, Cardinal Jean Du Bellay, gives expression to a paradox. It constitutes a poetry of exile, in which Du Bellay mercilessly dissects Roman society and yearns to return to his native France. At the same time, however, Rome was home for a humanist such as Du Bellay; for once in the eternal city, he had in a sense returned to his intellectual and cultural heritage, although it was fragmented, incomplete, and in ruins. This simultaneous estrangement and familiarity is played out in the space ...