Joachim du Bellay

Du Bellay helped argue that French could be a serious literary language, not just Latin. His 1549 manifesto La Défense et illustration de la langue française became a key text for the French Renaissance.

Du Bellay was part of the Pléiade, the Renaissance poetry circle associated with Pierre de Ronsard. The group wanted French poetry to rival Greek, Latin, and Italian models.

Les Regrets, published in 1558, is a sequence of sonnets shaped by du Bellay's time in Rome. The poems mix homesickness, satire, and disappointment with courtly and church politics.

That sonnet from Les Regrets turns the myth of Ulysses into a poem about longing for home. It remains one of du Bellay's most famous poems because it is both classical and personal.