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Article: `Qui a pais n'a que faire de patrie': Joachim Du Bellay's resistance to a French identity.
- Article from:
- The Romanic Review
- Article date:
- November 1, 2000
- Author:
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The poet Joachim Du Bellay is commonly recognized as one of the most famous figures of sixteenth-century French literature who gave voice to pro-French sentiment. A prominent member of the Pleiade, he was also the author of its famous manifesto, the Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse, in which he defended the French language as being the equal of other vernaculars such as Italian and sought to inaugurate a new literature worthy of France. Jean Dorat, the precepteur of many of the Pleiade poets, declares in a liminary poem that this treatise will bring Du Bellay eternal glory as a lover of his country. (1) However, it is the point of this essay to show that Du ...