Pierre de Ronsard

John Parkin (University of Bristol)

Ed. by Tim Unwin, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.02: French Writing and Culture in the Renaissance, 1400-1600.
Vol. editors: Robert J. Hudson (Brigham Young University), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), Phillip John Usher (New York University), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 11 Sep 1524
Died Dec 1585
Activity 1550-1585

Places

Born in France
Active in France

Activities

Primary

Poet

Other

Hymnist/ Psalmist

Resources

Ronsard's Works

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A provincial of the minor nobility, Ronsard was born in 1524 at La Possonnière, near Vendôme and in the Loire valley. He went on to become incontestably France's finest poet prior to the nineteenth century, despite not being associated with any great individual work. Though he planned a major epic, the

Franciade

, that gesture of cultural patriotism remained uncompleted, his vast

oeuvre

comprising instead an enormous number of shorter pieces, to which he added and which he revised and reclassified endlessly during his life, creating, to quote one of his modern students, “an ordered chaos”.

His father, Louis de Ronsard, was soldier and courtier to both Louis XII and Francis I, and the young Ronsard followed his example, attending, for instance, the Scottish court of James V subsequent

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3157 words

Citation: Parkin, John. "Pierre de Ronsard". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 November 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3838, accessed 22 November 2024.]