[In the essay which follows, Della Neva explores the possible influences upon two of Du Bellay's works]

As literary historians have often pointed out, two of Joachim Du Bellay's earliest important works were, in fact, published simultaneously. His Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, [Hereafter referred to as DI] the theoretical work destined to become the chief poetic manifesto of the Pléiade, and his first edition of the Olive, [Hereafter referred to as O] a 50-sonnet petrarchist sequence, were published under the same privilège in 1549.¹ One year later, Du Bellay published a second, expanded version of the Olive, this one containing 115 sonnets in the Petrarchan manner. In his preface to this second Olive, Du Bellay explains why he wrote his first poems:

Considerant encores nostre langue estre bien loing de sa perfection, … je voulu bien y faire quelque essay de ce peu d'esprit que la Nature m'a donné. Voulant donques enrichir nostre vulgaire d'une nouvelle, ou plustost ancienne renouvelée poësie, je m'adonnay à l'immitation des anciens Latins et des poëtes Italiens.

(O 44, italics added)

Du Bellay thus implies that one of the most striking features of the Olive is its use of language, a language that has been enriched through the imitation of classical and Italian models in an effort to perfect it.

Later, Du Bellay goes on to reveal his reasons for composing the Deffence. Fearing that his audience would consider his early poetry strange and would not understand this new poetic endeavor, Du Bellay wrote the Deffence to accompany these poems so that his literary theory could serve as an explanation to the poetry that followed:

Je craignoy' un autre inconvenient. … C'est que telle nouveauté de poësie pour le commencement seroit trouvée fort etrange et rude. Au moyen de quoy, voulant prevenir cete mauvaise opinion, et quasi comme applanir le chemin à ceux qui, excitez par mon petit labeur, voudroient enrichir nostre vulgaire de figures et locutions estrangeres, je mis en lumiere ma Deffence et illustration de la langue françoise: ne pensant toutefois au commencement faire plus grand oeuvre qu'une epistre et petit advertissement au lecteur.

(O 46)

According to Du Bellay, then, the Deffence constitutes a sort of preface to his early poetry, and indeed it echoes much of the actual prefaces to the sonnet sequence. These passages together imply that the Olive and the Deffence share a common concern: the development of the French vernacular as an excellent medium of poetic expression.²

Not only does the Olive provide a practical illustration to the theory of poetic perfection expounded in the Deffence, it also thematizes this issue in several sonnets. Here, however, Du Bellay's concern with attaining perfection in poetic expression is always directly related to the perfection of his beloved. Du Bellay insists that his love for Olive demands that he seek excellence in poetic expression, for she is undoubedly deserving of the best that art can achieve. It is in this sense that the Olive can be said to illustrate the Deffence: for both works bear witness to Du Bellay's desire to seek perfection in poetic expression, whether it be for the glory of France or for the glory of his beloved.

The theme of Olive's perfect beauty is first linked to the theme of the poet's expression in Olive “6.” After describing his beloved's dazzling face (which is comparable to the sun, since no one could behold their brilliance without being blinded), the poet-lover questions his ability to praise his beloved adequately, since he cannot even gaze on her as he would like:

Regardez doncq' si suffisant je suys
A vous louer, qui seulement ne puys
Vos grands beautez contempler à mon gré.

(O “6”: 9-11)

This self-doubt is expressed once again in Olive “8”:

Auray'-je bien de louer le pouvoir
Ceste beauté, qui decore le monde,
Quand pour orner sa chevelure blonde
Je sens ma langue ineptement mouvoir?

(O “8”: 1-4)

Similarly, in Olive “20,” Du Bellay employs a variation of the inexpressibility topos, comparing himself unfavorably to Homer, the epitome of perfect literary expression:

Puis que les cieux m'avoient predestiné
A vous aymer, digne object de celuy
Par qui Achille est encor' aujourdhuy
Contre les Grecz pour s'amye obstiné,
Pourquoy aussi n'avoient-ilz ordonné
Renaitre en moy l'ame et l'esprit de luy?

(O “20”: 1-6)

According to Du Bellay, the subject of his poetry is worthy to be praised by a true master of eloquence. While one might think that Olive's beauty should inspire poetic perfection, Du Bellay implies that he has been cheated by the gods who have not bestowed on him the gift of eloquence they had lavished on Homer. Du Bellay's choice of Homer to represent the perfect model of literary excellence in this sonnet once again recalls the arguments he developed in the Deffence, which likewise posited classical authors such as Homer as models of perfection.

Perhaps nowhere in the Olive is the theme of perfect poetic expression in the manner of the ancients (as required by Olive's perfect beauty) more evident than in Olive “62.” While this sonnet was first published in the expanded version of the Olive, one year after the publication of the Deffence, it still echoes some of the concerns of that treatise; for its theme, as Ernesta Caldarini rightfully suggests, is the “recherche d'une forme littéraire aussi noble et ornée que celle de l'ancienne poésie” (O 116):

Qui voudra voir le plus precieux arbre
Que l'orient ou le midy avoüe,
Vienne où mon fleuve en ses ondes se joüe:
Il y verra l'or, l'ivoire et le marbre.
Il y verra les perles, le cinabre
Et le cristal: et dira que je loüe
Un digne object de Florence et Mantoüe,
De Smyrne encor', de Thebes et Calabre.
Encor' dira que la Touvre et la Seine
Avec' la Saone arriveroient à peine
A la moitié d'un si divin ouvrage:
Ne cetuy là qui naguere a faict lire
En lettres d'or gravé sur son rivage
Le vieil honneur de l'une et l'autre lire.

In this poem, Du Bellay invites his readers to behold his beloved, here described as “le plus precieux arbre” since she is identified with the olive tree by virtue of her name. Like Olive “20,” Olive “62” declares that Du Bellay's beloved is worthy to be sung by the greatest authors. The repetition of the phrase “digne object” in both sonnets (O “20”:2; O “62”:7) serves as a lexical link between these two thematically similar poems. Also like O “20,” O “62” does not explicitly name the great authors for whom Olive would be a worthy object of praise. Instead, Du Bellay uses the device of antonomasia, in which a descriptive phrase is substituted for a proper name. In the second quatrain of Olive “62,” these writers are evoked by means of the names of the geographical locations with which they were associated: Florence (Petrarch), Mantua (Virgil), Smyrna (Homer), Thebes (Pindar) and Calabria (Horace). In the Deffence, Du Bellay had repeatedly held up these same authors as models for the aspiring poet to emulate; the implication was that poetic perfection could be achieved not only by divine inspiration, but also (and perhaps more importantly) by imitating the excellence of those authors whose work had attained the stature of a classic. The presence of this catalogue of classical models in O “62,” a sonnet that also treats the theme of perfect expression worthy of the beloved's own perfection, is likewise suggestive of the importance of imitation in the development of an excellent medium of poetic expression. Since O “62” is, as both scholarly editions of the Olive have pointed out, itself inspired by a well-known poem contained in Petrarch's Rime sparse, [Hereafter referred to as R]³ it seems legitimate to look more closely at this sonnet as a guide to Du Bellay's understanding of imitative practice as a means of achieving the poetic perfection Olive so richly deserves.

Petrarch's R 248 and Du Bellay's O “62” are no doubt thematically similar: they both praise the beauty of the beloved and raise the issue of poetry's ability to express that beauty.

Chi vuol veder quantunque po Natura
e'l Ciel tra noi, venga a mirar costei
ch' è sola un sol, non pur a li occhi mei
ma la mondo cieco che vertù non cura;
et venga tosto, perché Morte fura
prima i migliori et lascia star i rei:
questa aspettata al regno delli dei
cosa bella mortal passa et non dura.
Vedrà, s'arriva a tempo, ogni vertute,
ogni bellezza, ogni real costume
giunti in un corpo con mirabil tempre:
Allor dirà che mie rime son mute,
l'ingegno offeso dal soverchio lume.
Ma se più tarda, avra da pianger sempre.

(R 248)

The rhetorical articulation of the first quatrain in each of these poems is identical. Du Bellay faithfully translates the opening words of R 248 and the subsequent clauses revolving around the invitation to “come see” the beloved's beauty (“Chi vuol veder … venga … vedrà” / “Qui voudra voir … vienne … verra”). But this does not imply that Du Bellay did not transform his sources in an effort to make them his own. First, Du Bellay replaced Petrarch's sun image (“ch' è sola un sol,” v. 3) with the tree (“le plus precieux arbre,” v. 1) that represents his beloved. Just as Petrarch associated his Laura with the laurel tree, an evergreen symbolizing, among other things, the reward of poetic glory, so did Du Bellay identify his beloved Olive with the olive tree. While Du Bellay may thus have been inspired by Petrarch's symbol of poetic glory, he nevertheless transforms that image, establishing the olive as his very own symbol of glory.⁴

Still another transformation in the Petrarchan model occurs in Du Bellay's description of Olive's beauty. In R 248, Petrarch surely alludes to Laura's loveliness, but only in vague, general terms (“cosa bella mortal,” v. 8 and “ogni vertute / ogni bellezza, ogni real costume,” vv. 9-10). Du Bellay, however, fragments his beloved into distinct, individually describable units. He enumerates his lady's charms through a series of mineral images traditionally associated with these precise parts of a woman's body: gold (hair), ivory and marble (skin and/or hands), pearls (teeth), cinnebar (lips) and crystal (eyes). These images are petrarchist clichés which Du Bellay's readers no doubt encountered on countless occasions in the French and Italian love poetry of the time. It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that in O “62” Du Bellay is merely drawing from the stockpile of conventional images available to him.

But upon closer inspection, it is reasonable to suggest a specific subtext for this quatrain of O “62,” one that is not mentioned by either of the two modern editors of the Olive: a poem by Girolamo Parabosco, a minor Italian poet anthologized by Gabriel Giolito:

Chi uuol ueder tutta raccolta insieme
Quanta fu mai bellezza, & leggiadria,
Miri la donna mia.
Vedrà i biondi capei
Auanzar di uaghezza il più fin oro.
D'auorio il fronte spatioso, & schietto,
Et quella, onde uorrei
spesso morir, tanto n'haurei diletto,
Bocca di bei rubin, ch'asconder suole
Quelle perle d'Amor ricco thesoro.(5)

Du Bellay was probably aware of Parabosco's own imitation of R 248, for as Caldarini's notes attest, he frequently used poems contained in the Giolito anthology as sources for his Olive. While it is true that only three mineral images appear in both O “62” and Parabosco's poem (gold, ivory, pearls), it is equally true that the structure of the two texts (the Petrarchan formula “chi vuol veder” followed by a fragmentary description of the beloved) is identical. Petrarch's R 248 is undoubtedly the “official” subtext of O “62,” to use Thomas Greene's term, one “whose presence as subtext an integral reading is compelled to acknowledge” (19). Still Parabosco's poem does provide and “ornamental” subtext, one whose constituent parts could be fragmented and incorporated within the larger structure to enhance its detail.

There is, in addition, one notable expression in the list of stock images in O “62”: the word “cinabre” or cinnabar, referring to the redness of the lady's lips. This somewhat technical term, signifying the mercuric sulfide used to make vermilion pigment, was never used by Petrarch in the Rime or by Du Bellay's immediate petrarchist predecessor, Maurice Scève, in the Délie.⁶ Indeed, this may well be the first metonymic use of this technical term to be found in the French language.⁷ This is not surprising, since the appropriation of technical terms was one of the ways aspiring poets were advised by Du Bellay to enrich the French language, a major concern of the Deffence:

Encores te veux-je advertir de hanter quelquesfois, non seulement les scavans, mais aussi toutes sortes d'ouvriers & gens mecaniques, comme mariniers, fondeurs, peintres, engraveurs & autres, scavoir leurs inventions, les noms des matieres, des outilz, & les termes usitez en leurs ars & metiers, pour tyrer de la ces belles comparaisons & vives descriptions de toutes choses.

(DI 172)

Du Bellay thus seems to be illustrating his own advice in using this technical term to draw a novel comparison within a traditional framework.

But Du Bellay's inspiration to use this heretofore uncommon word may have come at least as much from a literary text as from everyday life. While it is true that Petrarch himself did not use the word “cinabro” in describing Laura's lips, another Italian poet, Ludovico Ariosto, did employ this metonym in one of the most celebrated passages of the Orlando Furioso, the portrait of Alcina: “Sotto quel sta, quasi fra due vallette, / la bocca sparsa di natio cinabro” (7: 13, 1-2).⁸ It is significant, but not surprising, that this passage is cited as the earliest metonymic use of this term in Italian:⁹ for Du Bellay had, in the Deffence, praised Ariosto for enriching the Italian language and thus rendering his epic virtually equal to the work of the greatest classical writers:

si tu as quelquefois pitié de ton pauvre Langaige, si tu daignes l'enrichir de tes thesors, ce sera toy veritablement qui luy feras hausser la teste, & d'un brave sourcil s'egaler aux superbes Langues Grecque & Latine, comme a faict de nostre tens en son vulgaire un Arioste Italien, que j'oseroy' (n'estoit la saincteté des vieulx poëmes) comparer à un Homere & Virgile.

(DI 128)

Du Bellay was thus apparentely impressed by Ariosto's eagerness to borrow words and enrich his language and may well have been struck by his innovative use of the technical term “cinabro” in his portrait of Alcina. At any rate, it is their common use of this unusual term—what Michael Riffaterre might call an “interpretant” (81-114)—that allows the reader to identify this passage from the Furioso as yet another (albeit distant) subtext of O “62.”

There is, moreover, a still more obvious subtext for Du Bellay's sonnet, as both Caldarini and Chamard point out: R 247, the poem immediately preceding Du Bellay's primary model in the Rime sparse:

Parrà forse ad alcun che 'n lodar quella
ch'i' adoro in terra, errante sia 'l mio stile
faccendo lei sovr'ogni altra gentile,
santa, saggia, leggiadra, onesta et bella.
A me par il contrario, et temo ch'ella
non abbia a schifo il mio dir troppo umile,
degna d'assai più alto et più sottile;
et chi nol crede venga egli a vedella,
sì dirà ben: “Quello ove questi aspira
è cosa da stancare Atene, Arpino,
Mantova et Smirna, et l'una et l'altra lira.
“Lingua mortale al suo stato divino
giunger non pote; Amor la spinge et tira
non per elezion ma per destino.”

(R 247)

This sonnet also treats the inexpressibility topos and is further linked to R 248 by the obvious echo in verse eight, “venga a vedella.” In this way, its relationship to R 248 is comparable to that of O “61” to O “62,” for O “61” announces the subject of O “62” through the repetition of certain lexical items: “souhaitez luy de voir / l'heureux object qui m'a faict malheureux” (vv. 13-14). But the fragment of R 247 that serves as a direct model for O “62” is limited to the first tercet, in which Petrarch alludes to the famous classical writers who would tire in the arduous task of singing Laura's praises adequately. These writers, like those in O “62,” are evoked by means of the names of the places where they were born: Athens (Demosthenes), Arpinum (Cicero), Mantua (Virgil), Smyrna (Homer), Thebes (Pindar) and Calabria (Horace).

There are, however, a number of significant changes that Du Bellay enacts upon this Petrarchan source in Olive “62.” In R 247, Petrarch declares that these famous writers would tire (i.e., be incapable) of adequately describing Laura, just as he fears he is not able to do justice to her exceptional beauty in his own poetry. It is Love, however, who destined him to attempt such a daring feat. Du Bellay, on the other hand, states that his beloved would be a worthy object of praise for the very best writers. The implication is that they, and perhaps they alone, would be capable of singing Olive's praises adequately.

A less subtle change that Du Bellay enacts upon his source consists in the way he alters Petrarch's list of great writers. The most obvious of these changes is the fact that Petrarch himself appears at the head of this catalogue that, in effect, constitutes a canon of approved authors. In this way, Du Bellay bestows a place of honor on the poet whose sonnets were the chief sources of O “62” and indeed of the Olive as a whole. Moreover, by adding Petrarch to his list Du Bellay suggests that his canon of great authors is infinitely expandable. A poet such as Petrarch, who had himself imitated prior great poets, is now made equal to his models as he takes his place alongside them in Du Bellay's poem.

As for the classical models mentioned, Du Bellay retains the names of Virgil and Homer, appearing in R 247, but substitutes Pindar and Horace for Demosthenes and Cicero. While the latter writers figure prominently in the Deffence, being mentioned together in two passages (23-24; 27-28) that closely resemble the list of famous writers contained in Petrarch's sonnet, their appearance in O “62” would be somewhat inappropriate: for Du Bellay is obviously treating the merits of poetic language as distinct from the prose discourse for which these orators were justly famous. Likewise, in the Deffence, Du Bellay establishes a similar distinction, limiting the subject of his treatise to the development of the poet, not the orator, since that objective had already been treated by Etienne Dolet (85-86; 87-89). By eliminating the names of the two classical orators and replacing them with the names of poets, Du Bellay thus gives a greater coherence to his list in O “62.”

In the first tercet of O “62,” Du Bellay again uses the device of antonomasia (that was no doubt inspired by R 247) in enumerating a series of French rivers representing contemporary poets: the Touvre (Mellin de Saint-Gelais), the Seine (Antoine Héroët) and the Saône (Scève). But unlike the catalogue of the second quatrain, the list of poets mentioned here are those incapable of singing Olive's praises: for Du Bellay clearly states that, even put together, they are scarcely capable of half such a task (“arriveroient à peine / A la moitié d'un si divin ouvrage,” vv. 9-10). This distinction between the foreign, classical poets and the modern French poets is made even sharper by the visual separation of the sonnet into quatrains and tercets, as well as by the use of the adverb “encore,” which is to be understood in the disjunctive sense of “furthermore.”

This less than flattering evaluation of what were considered to be the best French poets of the time is, once more, echoed in the Deffence:

Quand à moy, si j'etoy' enquis de ce que me semble de notz meilleurs poëtes Francoys, je diroy' … qu'ilz ont bien ecrit, qu'ilz ont illustré notre Langue, que la France leur est obligée: mais aussi diroy-je bien qu'on pouroit trouver en notre Langue (si quelque scavant homme y vouloit mettre la main) une forme de poësie beaucoup plus exquise, la quele il faudroit chercher en ces vieux Grecz & Latins, non point és aucteurs Francoys.

(DI 99-100, italics added)

Du Bellay's suggestion that the aspiring poet avoid French models and turn to classical sources is symbolized, in O “62,” by the shift in tone between the second quatrain—ending (significantly) with allusions to Pindar and Horace, the two classical models for the ode—and the first tercet, which begins with an allusion to Saint-Gelais, a French composer of “odes” exalted by Thomas Sebillet in his Art Poétique Françoys of 1549, but damned by Du Bellay in the Deffence (DI 114-115).¹⁰

Unlike Du Bellay, Sebillet had urged aspiring poets to emulate those French models who had attained the stature of a classic:

Si le voeil-je bien aviser que l'invention, et le jugement compris soubz elle se conferment et enrichissent par la lecture des bons et classiques pöétes françois comme sont entre les vieux Alain Chartier, et Jan de Meun: mais plus lui profiteront les jeunes comme imbus de la pure source françoise, esclercie par feu tresillustre et tréssavant Prince François Roy de France, vivant pére de son peuple, et des Pöétes françois, entre lesquelz lira le novice dés muses françoises, Marot, Saingelais, Salel, Heroet, Scéve, et telz autres bons espris … et autrement les suivre pas a pas comme l'enfant la nourrice, partout ou il vouldra cheminer par dedans le pré de Pöésie.

(APF 26-27, italics added).

It is perhaps no accident, then, that, given Sebillet's allusion to the “pure source françoise,” Du Bellay chose to represent these French poets by the names of the rivers that flow through their hometowns: for these rivers are, in effect, French sources that here symbolize French literature. In this way, the rivers mentioned in the first tercet are comparable to the homelands mentioned in the last quatrain, for each of these is ultimately an image of a source, an indicator of origins, both of the poets themselves and of the poetry they write.¹¹ The first group of sources are acceptable, as both O “62” and the Deffence imply. The second list, composed of native sources, is unacceptable for the aspiring poet.

Despite the somewhat disparaging implications made concerning French poetry in the first tercet of O “62,” the final tercet of Du Bellay's sonnet does present at least a glimmer of hope for the future of French poetry. Here, Du Bellay alludes to Ronsard's recent lyrical accomplishment in more flattering terms. Finally, French literature can boast of a poet who chooses a proper form and writes in a classical manner, rejuvenating “le vieil honneur de l'une et l'autre lyre” (v. 14). This last hemistich of v. 14 links O “62” once more to R 247, faithfully translating the last hemistich of that sonnet's first terect (“l'una et l'altra lira”). Yet the last tercet of O “62” is not entirely flattering to Ronsard, despite the claim of primacy made for him, for it is clear that the negative adverb “ne” at the beginning of verse 12 puts Ronsard in the same category as those poets alluded to in the first tercet: they are all incapable of singing Olive's praises adequately. Perhaps Du Bellay's pejorative comment is merely an example of hyperbole, intended to emphasize Olive's great beauty and virtue: she is so remarkable that even so fine a poet as Ronsard would be unequal to this task. At any rate, this somewhat negative portrayal of Ronsard's verses serves to emphasize further Du Bellay's need to create the perfect poetic expression that Olive deserves.

This reading of O “62” thus demonstrates how Du Bellay's concern for enriching the French vernacular, a theoretical concept expounded at great length in his Deffence, is thematized in the Olive under the guise of praising his beloved's perfection. Moreover, as an innovative re-working of a famous Petrarchan sonnet, it further demonstrates how imitation of classical sources may be the means to perfecting French poetic expression. Indeed, O “62” contains, in its initial quatrain, an image that is truly emblematic of Du Bellay's theory of imitation. Du Bellay's poetry does not spring from a “pure source françoise,” that is, from the heads of rivers such as the Seine, the Touvre and the Saône. Instead, it is like the olive tree itself, a precious plant not native to the poet's homeland but found in more exotic, foreign locations. The olive has its origins in the east and the south (‘l'orient ou le mydy”); it is, in effect, one of the “richesses orientales” that Du Bellay refers to in the Deffence (62). These are, of course, precisely the lands of the poets mentioned in the second tercet of O “62.” The implication is, then, that a precious resource, namely literary excellence, has been developed for ages in foreign countries, much as the olive has been grown in these lands. But, with proper care, it can be cultivated elsewhere, even in Anjou, as these verses from O “61” suggest:

Allez, mes vers, portez dessus voz aeles
Les sainctz rameaux de ma plante divine
Seul ornement de la terre Angevine

(O “61”: 1-3)

The poet's task, then, is literally to transplant this foreign material, to nurture it and let it take root, so that it can eventually thrive on the poet's home shore, the banks of the Loir, as Du Bellay's almost visionary sonnet suggests. This transplantation is not unlike the one suggested in this passage of the Deffence, where Du Bellay describes how the French must cultivate their language as the Romans cultivated Latin:

si les anciens Romains eussent eté aussi negligens à la culture de leur Langue, quand permierement [sic] elle commenca à pululer, pour certain en si peu de tens elle ne feust devenue si grande. Mais eux, en guise de bons agriculteurs, l'ont premierement-transmuée d'un lieu sauvaige en un domestique: puis affin que plus tost & mieux elle peust fructifier, coupant à l'entour les inutiles rameaux, l'ont pour echange d'iceux restaurée de rameaux francz & domestiques, magistralement tirez de la Langue Greque, les quelz soudainement se sont si bien entez & faiz semblables à leur tronc, que desormais n'apparoissent plus adoptifz, maiz naturelz.

(DI 25, italics added)

This passage, which is itself based on another Italian text, the Dialogo delle lingue of Sperone Speroni, explains how transplantation of a foreign element can lead to the development of a new native plant. It is perhaps in this sense that “Olive,” the ostensible pretext of Du Bellay's love poetry, acquires her fullest meaning, for she respresents the transplantation of a foreign literary tradition onto native French soil.

Notes

1. The original edition of the Deffence owed by the B.N. (La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse, par I.D.B.A., Paris: Arnoul l'Angelier, 1549) is bound together with L'Olive et Quelques autres Œuvres poeticques (Cinquante sonnetz à la louange de l'Olive, l'Anterotique de la vieille, & de la ieune amye, Vers Lyriques), par I.D.B.A., Paris: Arnoul l'Angelier, 1549.

2. The mutual illumination offered by the Olive and the Deffence has been noted by Gray, who remarks: “Entre la Deffence et l'Olive, des échanges ont dû se produire; l'Olive, par son caractère elliptique et obscur, demandait les explications de la Deffence, tandis que la Deffence, par ses audaces, ses nouveautés, ses imprécisions, avait besoin de l'illustration de l'Olive” (30). Ferguson maintains that this interrelationship has not been adequately explored: “Because critics tend to distinguish sharply between critical and imaginative texts, they have missed the ways in which Du Bellay's poetry may illuminate his exposition of a theory of poetry” (276).

3. See Caldarini (116) and Œuvres poetiques I (L'Olive, L'Anterotique, XIII Sonnetz de l'Honneste Amour), ed. Chamard (78-79).

4. On the olive as a symbol of glory, see Joukovsky (374-390).

5. Found in Rime diversi di molti eccellentiss. auttori nuovamente raccolte, vol. I (322), vv. 4-10. Other Italian imitations of R 248 in the Giolito anthology include Giovanni Guidiccione, “Chi desia di veder dove s'adora” (159), and Ludovico Dolce, “Chi vuol veder raccolte in un soggetto” (331).

6. Consult McKenzie and Nash on this point.

7. The first attested use of “cinabre” as a metonym for “couleur rouge” is Ronsard's Amours de 1552, “et de son teint le cinabre vermeil,” sonnet 62 (“Les Elemenz, & les Astres, à preuve”). See on this point, Trésor de la langue francaise, vol 5 (812). But Du Bellay's use obviously precedes this by two years.

8. On the imitation of the portrait of Alcina by Pléiade poets, see Weber, (265-68).

9. Consult the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, vol. 3 (148-49.)

10. For a discussion of Saint-Gelais's chansons see Stone, (21). In his analysis of Saint-Gelais's “odes,” Stone concludes that Du Bellay wrongfully criticized his compatriot, whose poems were indeed different from “chansons vulgaires” (34-45).

11. Du Bellay also used a similar river/source image in Olive 77. For an extensive discussion of such imagery, see David Quint's essential study.

Works Cited

Ariosto, Ludovico. Opere. Ed. Adriano Seroni. Milan: Mursia, n.d.

Du Bellay, Joachim. La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse. Ed. Henri Chamard, 1948. Paris: Didier, 1966.

———. Œuvres poétiques. Vol. I (L'Olive, L'Anterotique, XIII Sonnetz de l'Honneste Amour). Ed. Henri Chamard. 2nd ed. 1902. Paris: Nizet, 1982.

———. L'Olive. Ed. E[rnesta] Caldarini. Geneva: Droz, 1974.

Durling, Robert M., trans. Petrarch's Lyric Poems. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976.

Ferguson, Margaret W. “The Exile's Defense: Du Bellay's La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse,” PMLA 93 (1978): 275-289.

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