The Poet's Odyssey Joachim du Bellay and the Antiquitez de Rome [Hardcover]

This fascinating study traces the artistic development of one of the major poets of the French Renaissance, Joachim Du Bellay (1522-1560). Tucker focuses on how the poet differed from his contemporaries, describes in detail the importance of his move to Rome in 1553, and provides a close analysis of Du Bellay's complex sonnet sequence,Antiquitez de Rome. In assessing the sonnets, Tucker first locates their central importance within the poet's production, then further situates them with the living and scholarly context of Du Bellay's Rome. Throughout, the volume highlights the sonnets' rich intertextual framework in classical, neo-Latin, and vernacular literature, making them more accessible to the modern reader.

I wish to greet this book with delighted applause and say: Read it, if you have any interest in the relationship of poetry to philosophy and history, of the Renaissance to the past, or the Pleiade to the rest of French literature, of Renaissance concerns about the nature and value of art. --Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance

He has much to say that is both new and important. --Renaissance Quarterly