Ronsard, Part I

1. Biography

Short recap of Ronsard’s life: http://www.publius-historicus.com/ronsard.html

2. Chronology of Ronsard’s works:

1547 L'Ode à Peletier du Mans
1549 Épithalame d'Antoine de Bourbon,
Avant-entrée du roi très chrétien à Paris, 
Hymne de France, 
Fantaisie à sa Dame
1550 Quatre Premiers Livres des Odes
1552 Les Amours
Cinquième livre des Odes
1553 Folastries
1554 Bocages
Mélanges
1555 Continuation des Amours
1556 Nouvelle Continuation des Amours
1562 Discours des Misères de ce Temps
Continuation des Discours
Remontrance au peuple de France
1563 Réponses aux injures et calomnies de je ne sais quels prédicantereaux et ministreaux de Genève
1565 Eligies, Mascarades et Bergerie
1572 La Franciade
1578 Oeuvres recueil réunissant les Sonnets sur la mort de Marie et les sonnets pour Hélène

3. Origins and Themes

Ronsard used as his starting point the Petrarchan model, as did many of his contemporaries. Michel Beaujour writes: “In keeping with their limited understanding of the triumphant Petrarchan model, the new lyric poets set out to modulate endlessly the pangs of unrequited love and to sublimate sexual desire in accordance with Neoplatonic thought.”

According to Terence Cave, “[Ronsard] exploited a sixteenth-century world-view, but created it from a distinctive poetic vision, with its own priorities. Water, sunlight and sound constantly recur; the circle and curve, clouds and dreams, movement absorption, metamorphosis; and these imaginative preoccupations are inevitably linked with certain predominant values and concepts. Abundance, fertility and continuity are affirmed against their opposite poles: emptiness, sterility, impermanence, dissolution and death. This balance between a positive poetic world and its negative counterpart often betrays an underlying uncertainty. The poet’s need for communication and identification, his aspiration to extend his experience beyond the limits of finite personality, pervade his work from beginning to end; but the same factors suggest, too, a profound dissatisfaction with ‘reality’, with the world of everyday contingencies. Thus it is not surprising that among the most characteristic inhabitants of Ronsard’s poetic landscape one finds figures embodying plenitude and deprivation, ambivalent personifications of fame, and, above all, a group of mythological deities representing poetry itself: poetry is here both the vehicle and the central theme.” (p. 4)

[Note: I know that you have probably already read this preface, but I felt that this passage in particular deserves emphasis. The themes that Cave outlines prevail in the poetry of many of Ronsard’s contemporaries, and I found that this quote pulls together much of what we’ve encountered in our recent poetry sojourns.]

4. Les Amours de Cassandre

From alalettre.com:
En 1545 , alors qu'il a vingt ans , il rencontre une jeune fille de treize ans, Cassandre Salviati. Aussitôt rencontrée, aussitôt disparue, la jeune Cassandre va devenir l'être "inaccessible". Elle se marie l'année suivante avec le seigneur de Pré. Elle sera à Ronsard, ce que Laure a été à Pétrarque, et va lui permettre de célébrer l'amour platonique
A la jeune et austère Cassandre, se sont succédées Marie et Hélène, une jeune paysanne et une des filles de la Cour de Catherine de Médicis. Aux trois, dans des styles différents correspondant à la fois à la période de sa vie et aux caractères de ses muses, Ronsard a offert des sonnets que des générations de lycéens ont appris à déclamer.

An additional note about the styles of the three cycles of love poetry: the Cassandre cycle (1552-1553) follows a more classical model, Marie (1555-1556) represents manierisme, and Hélène (1578) is considered baroque. [this is from my Alan Smith notes]

From Terence Cave’s preface to Ronsard the Poet:

“...the poet’s desire to ‘extend his experience’ is embodied in a constant striving after beauty: a beauty compounded of both erotic and aesthetic pleasure, yet transcending both. This constant preoccupation draws upon the established attitudes of the petrarchan lover, transforming them without at any point questioning their value.” (p. 5)


MORE TO FOLLOW

Bonne lecture! Holly