Joachim Du Bellay, Défense et illustration de la langue française [Defence and Illustration of the French Language]

Jonathan Patterson (University of Oxford)

Ed. by Phillip John Usher, New York University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.02: French Writing and Culture in the Renaissance, 1400-1600.
Vol. editors: Robert J. Hudson (Brigham Young University), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), Phillip John Usher (New York University), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1549

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)

Resources

In March 1549 Joachim Du Bellay, an up-and-coming French poet, published La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse, a feisty manifesto in which he justified French as a worthy language of literary composition. In this work, Du Bellay aggressively defended his mother tongue at a time when many held French to be an inferior relation of Italian, Latin and Greek. Since its first publication, Du Bellay’s Deffence, et illustration has enjoyed mixed fortunes.

As modern critics have pointed out, the Deffence, et illustration paradoxically offers both more and less than its title suggests (Ferguson 1994, 194). In some respects it surpasses the reader’s expectations: Du Bellay not only discusses the …

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2896 words

Citation: Patterson, Jonathan. "Défense et illustration de la langue française". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 January 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35589, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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