Joachim du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay (1522?-1560), French poet, born near Liré. As a student in Paris he met the poet Pierre de Ronsard, who introduced him to the Pléiade, a Renaissance group restyling French literature on Greek and Roman models. In 1549 du Bellay wrote the Pléiade manifesto La défense et illustration de la langue française (The Defense and Illustration of the French Language) and L'Olive, 115 sonnets styled after the Italian poet Petrarch. From 1553 to 1557 du Bellay was in Rome, and in 1558 he wrote two more sonnet collections, Les regrets and Les antiquités de Rome. The latter collection was translated in 1591 into The Ruins of Rome, by the English poet Edmund Spenser.