du Bellay, Joachim (c. 1522–1560)

French poet and prose writer. He published the great manifesto of the new school of French poetry, the Pléiade: Défense et illustration de la langue française/Defence and Illustration of the French Language (1549). He also wrote sonnets inspired by the Italian poet Petrarch and his meditations on the vanished glories of Rome, Antiquités de Rome/Roman Antiquities (1558), influenced English writers such as Edmund Spenser who translated some of his work. Les Regrets/Regrets (1558), a collection of sonnets, is his most characteristic work.

The ‘Défense’ advocated the use of French with an enriched vocabulary, and also a loftier status for poetry, following classical models. L'Olive/The Olive, a collection of Petrarchan love sonnets, appeared the same year. From 1553 to 1557 du Bellay was in Rome as secretary to his cousin, the ambassador Jean du Bellay. On his return he published Antiquités de Rome and Les Regrets, satirizing the corruption of contemporary Rome. His poems suggest a melancholy mind concerned with the flight of time and the passing of human greatness, together with a talent for lively observation.