Ronsard, Pierre de 1524-85
French poet

Born in La Possonni�re, he served the Dauphin and the Duc d'Orl�ans as page, and accompanied James V with his bride, Mary of Lorraine (Guise), to Scotland, and stayed there for three years. Despite the onset of partial deafness, he studied under the humanist Jean Daurat, at first with Jean Antoine de Ba�f and later with Joachim du Bellay and R�my Belleau. His seven years of study produced Odes (1550), Amours (1552), Bocage (1554), Hymnes (1555), the conclusion of his Amours (1556), and the first collected edition of his poetry (1560). He subsequently wrote two bitter reflections on the state of France, Discours des mis�res de ce temps (1560-69, 'Discourse on the Wretchedness of these Times') and Remonstrance au peuple de France (1563, 'Admonission of the French People'), and in 1572, following the massacre of St Bartholomew, La Franciade, an unfinished epic. Charles IX heaped favours on Ronsard, who became the most important poet of 16th-century France, being the chief exemplar of the doctrines of the Pl�iade, which aimed at raising the status of French as a literary language.

Bibliography: G Cohen, Ronsard, sa vie et son ?uvre (1924)