Pléiade, La

Group of seven poets in 16th-century France, led by Pierre Ronsard, who aimed to break away from the medieval poetic tradition by seeking inspiration in classical Greek and Latin works, and to make the French language a suitable medium for all literary purposes. The other poets, according to Ronsard, were Joaquim du Bellay, Jean Antoine de Baïf, Rémi Belleau, Etienne Jodelle, Pontus de Tyard (1521–1605), and Jacques Peletier, but the name of the humanist scholar Jean Dorat is sometimes substituted for that of Peletier. The views of the group were first set out in du Bellay's Défense et illustration de la langue française (1549), and the name is derived from the seven stars of the Pleiades group.