This page will grow (slowly) as I find time and energy to develop it.
To kick off, Ronsard’s ancestry, parents and early life are discussed in the context of his autobiographical Elegy XVI. Ronsard began as “Pierre Ronsard, Vandomois” amd gradually became “Pierre de Ronsard, gentilhomme Vandomois”. You’d not believe it from reading this poem!
Ronsard also writes about his career choices. In Poems book 2, the “discours à P. L’Escot” (no.7) imagines Ronsard being lectured by his father about why he should be anything but a poet…
As to his later life, Ronsard brings the religious strife in France and the weakness of his ageing body neatly together in one of the Helen sonnets in 1578.
Some key dates
1524 – born at La Possonnière, the 4th child (and 3rd son) of Louis de Ronsard
1533 – enrolled at the Collège de Navarre, to be trained for the church, but stays only 6 months
1533-1537 – page at the court of the dauphin, then of the Duc d’Orléans.
1537 – page to Madeleine, French wife of James V of Scotland; spends some months in Scotland and England
1538-1539 – serves with the ambassador to Flanders, the Comte de Lassigny
1539 – in the entourage of Lazare de Baif on embassy to Germany; meets his son Jean-Antoine de Baif. Both interested in poetry, they strike up a friendship.
1540-1543 – struck by a disease which leaves him partially deaf, at the age of 16 Ronsard is forced to retire from court life back at La Possonnière; now thinking of a career in the church, he takes minor orders in 1543 but remains formally in the service of the Duc d’Orléans. Writes several odes.
1544 – Louis de Ronsard dies; Ronsard is free to plan an alternative career. He enrols with Jean Dorat (Daurat) to study Greek writers, perhaps at the Collège de Coqueret in Paris, and also familiarises himself (if he hadn’t already) with Italian poetry.
1547 – meets Joachim du Bellay; the Pleiade forms around them, Baif and Dorat. One of Ronsard’s odes is published. Further occasional poems are published in 1549.
[Ronsard only uses the word Pleiade once, in passing, and usually refers to the group as the ‘brigade’ – though only at the beginning was there a true sense of a ‘group’ with a shared agenda to change French poetry. ‘Membership’ shifted and changed constantly as rivalries literary and religious divided them, and Ronsard never offers the same list of names twice! The term Pleiade was mostly thrown at Ronsard (and others) by Protestant opponents in the Wars of Religion, sniping at poets who set themselves up as stars or gods. It’s only really gained currency as a descriptor for the loose group around Ronsard in modern times.]
1550 – the Odes, books 1-4, published to general acclaim, though at first the reception at court is less positive.
1552 – the first sonnet collection, together with Odes book 5, and the musical Supplement encouraging the setting of the poems to music
1555 – the Continuation des Amours completes the Cassandre poems
1556 – with the Nouvelle Continuation des Amours, Ronsard launches the Marie series, adopting a different approach to the sonnet’s language and learned complexity. Alongside these major works, books of Folasteries, of Meslanges, of Hymns, and others pour from Ronsard’s pen. The ‘Prince of Poets’ has arrived and his enormous work-ethic sees the flood of verse continue unabated.
Oeuvres de Ronsard 