Pierre de Ronsard's Odes and the Law of Poetic Space

Abstract

Et faictes que toujours j'espieD'oeil veillant les secretz des cieulx.(Ode à Michel de I'Hospital)The Odes of 1550 and 1552 reveal Pierre de Ronsard's ambition to gain entry into the court of Henri II. In the 1550 preface to the Odes, Ronsard does not make the slightest effort to veil his literary and political objectives. He presents his Odes as a poetic challenge to Clément Marot's psalm translations of 1541 and 1543 with the discovery of an equally ancient lyric source, pagan rather than Hebraic, and he mounts an ad hominem attack on the court poet Mellin de Saint-Gelais in order to win Henri's favor. The poetry, however, places in evidence other preoccupations. The Odes describe and problematize the endless wanderings of a poetic subject who seeks to uncover the secrets not only of the ancient world but of the modern one as well.

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