Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard, commonly referred to as Ronsard (September 11, 1524 – December, 1585), was a French poet and "prince of poets" (as his own generation in France called him). He was born at the Château de la Possonnière, near the village of Couture, Loir-et-Cher.

Bibliography

The chief separately published works of Ronsard are noted above. He produced, however, during his life a vast number of separate publications, some of them mere pamphlets or broadsheets, which from time to time he collected, often striking out others at the same time, in the successive editions of his works. Of these he himself published seven--the first in 1560, the last in 1584. Between his death and the year 1630 ten more complete editions were published, the most famous of which is the folio of 1609. A copy of this presented by Sainte-Beuve to Victor Hugo, and later in the possession of M. Maxime du Camp, has a place of its own in French literary history. The work of C Binet in 1586, Discours de la vie de Pierre de Ronsard, is very important for early information, and the author seems to have revised some of Ronsard's work under the poet's own direction.

Related Topics:
1560 - 1584 - Victor Hugo

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From 1630 Ronsard was not again reprinted for more than two centuries. Just before the close of the second, however, Sainte-Beuve printed a selection of his poems to accompany the above-mentioned Tableau (1828). There are also selections by M Noel (in the Collection Didot) and Becq de Fouquières. In 1857 M. Prosper Blanchemain, who had previously published a volume of Œuvres inédites de Ronsard, undertook a complete edition for the Bibliothéque Elzévirienne. The eighth and last volume of this appeared ten years later. It is practically complete; a few pieces of a somewhat free character which are ascribed with some certainty to the poet are, however, excluded. A later and better edition still is that of Marty-Laveaux (1887-1893), and another that of B Pifteau (1891).

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As for criticism, Sainte-Beuve followed up his early work by articles in the Causeries du lundi, and the chief later critics have dealt with him in their collected works.

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