swap_horiz François Villon Alternatives

1

Homer

Homer is a Greek poet whose oral tradition produced seminal works like the Iliad and the Odyssey. These epic poems, comp...

Epic Ancient Greek Oral

9.8 Brilliant

2

John Milton

John Milton remains a pivotal figure in English poetry. His extensive body of work, including *Paradise Lost*, explores...

Epic English Puritan Paradiselost

9.8 Brilliant

3

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is an American poet best known for *Leaves of Grass*, published in installments beginning in 1855. His work...

American Democratic Freeverse Leaves

9.7 Brilliant

4

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke was a significant 20th-century poet born in Austria. He is best known for his deeply philosophical an...

Lyric German Austrian Spiritual

9.7 Brilliant

5

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer remains one of England’s most influential poets. His *Canterbury Tales*, written in Middle English, off...

Narrative Medieval English Canterbury

9.5 Brilliant

6

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud was a significant French poet known for his intensely personal and visionary verse produced during his yo...

French Youth Visionary Symbolist

9.5 Brilliant

7

Rumi

Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic in Anatolia, whose Masnavi became a major text of Islamic spiritual...

Medieval Persian Sufi Mystic

9.4 Excellent

8

Hafez

Hafez was a 14th-century Persian lyric poet of Shiraz, famed for ghazals that blend love, wine imagery, mysticism, and s...

Medieval Persian Sufi Ghazal

9.3 Excellent

9

Stéphane Mallarmé

Stéphane Mallarmé was a French Symbolist poet whose dense, suggestive style and 1897 poem Un coup de dés influenced mode...

French Difficult Modernist Symbolist

9.3 Excellent

10

Ferdowsi

Ferdowsi was a Persian epic poet, born around 940, whose Shahnameh preserved Iranian legend and history in about 50,000...

Epic Medieval Persian Shahnameh

9.2 Excellent

11

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English Romantic poet and critic, known for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the 1798...

Romantic English Ballad Imagination

9.2 Excellent

12

Saadi Shirazi

Saadi Shirazi was a 13th-century Persian poet and prose writer, noted for the Bustan and Gulistan, ethical classics of P...

Medieval Persian Ghazal Didactic

9.0 Excellent

13

Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine was a French poet linked to Symbolism and Decadence, noted for the musical verse of Romances sans paroles,...

Lyric French Musical Symbolist

9.0 Excellent

14

Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry was a French poet and essayist whose long poem La Jeune Parque, published in 1917, restored his standing as...

French Intellectual Formal Symbolist

8.8 Great

15

Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet born in Rome whose 1913 Alcools and visual calligrammes helped bridge Symbolism,...

French Modernist Avantgarde Calligrammes

8.8 Great

16

Attar of Nishapur

Attar of Nishapur was a 12th to 13th-century Persian Sufi poet, best known for The Conference of the Birds, an allegoric...

Medieval Persian Sufi Mystic

8.6 Great

17

Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard was a French Renaissance poet, leader of the Pléiade, and author of Les Amours (1552), central to 16th...

French Renaissance Odes Pleiade

8.6 Great

18

William Langland

William Langland was an English poet traditionally credited with Piers Plowman, a major 14th-century allegorical poem on...

Medieval English Allegory Vision

8.4 Great

19

Joachim du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay was a French Renaissance poet and Pléiade member, notable for La Défense et illustration de la langue...

French Renaissance Sonnet Pleiade

8.3 Great

20

Alphonse de Lamartine

Alphonse de Lamartine was a French Romantic poet and statesman whose 1820 Méditations poétiques helped establish Romanti...

Lyric Romantic French Meditative

8.1 Great