La Pléiade

La Pléiade, French literary movement of the 16th century. Under this title, which refers to the constellation of the Pleiades, seven poets from the Alexandrian period (the reign of Ptolemy II) are gathered together. The title had been used before, by two successive groups of poets from Toulouse at the beginning of the 14th century, but it is usually applied to the seven writers assembled in 1553 by Pierre de Ronsard, who coined the term in 1556: besides himself, they were Joachim du Bellay, Pontus de Tynard, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Guillaume Desautels, Étienne Jodelle, and Jean de La Péruse. Their common aim was to promote the use of classical traditions by means of translations and the common use of the French language as an alternative to the archaic Latin tradition. This aim was expressed in 1549 by Du Bellay's Defence et Illustration de la Langue Françoise (The Defence and Illustration of the French Language, 1939). The group were apt to imitate Greek, Latin, and Italian poets, and favoured both the sonnet form and the alexandrine. The latter was to become the main metric form in 17th-century poetry and theatre. Whilst the members of the movement were not primarily innovators, they nevertheless articulated existing but confused attempts towards a new literature, thus providing the foundations of French Classicism.