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The life of Joachim Du Bellay (ca. 1522?‒60) was nearly coterminous with that of Charles V’s phantom Holy Roman Empire (1519‒56), so it is not surprising to find overt and covert figurations of nation and empire in his poetry.1 Les Regrets , Les Antiquitez de Rome and Songe and the Neo-Latin Poemata, all published in 1558, evoke Rome’s ancient empire with haunting echoes from the Augustan poets—from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid in particular.2 These Latin poets projected highly conflicted, deeply compromised attitudes about Octavius ’ rule. Virgil saw in Rome’s antiquity the seeds of its imperial greatness but also signs of its decay. Horace acknowledged the olive branch of tranquillity and civilization proffered by Octavius but also an inner emptiness in Augustan pageantry and flourish. Ovid in a regretful exile could only ponder his missteps as an imperial poet. Yet another poet—and for Du Bellay’s vernacular ambitions a still more significant one—confronted similar conflicts and resulting compromises. It was Petrarch. With an exilic consciousness fixated upon the totemic power of Italy and its imperial legacy, Petrarch had shaped a version of his national identity which fantasized grander origins and a more exalted destiny than reality allowed. Later commentators viewed his love for Laura as a projection of this fantasy, and Du Bellay’s poetry resonates with their speculations. His sonnets become vehicles for expressing a national sentiment grounded in personal loyalties to friends and associates of the same status, rank, or class. They address an audience already familiar with the Rime sparse, readers defined by their strong ties to Italian culture and their desire for a national French culture to match the 77 Du Bellay and the Language of Empire The Deffence et illustration 4 latter. It is an audience of aristocratic patrons, court councillors, and rival poets who as public figures often loom larger in Du Bellay’s plan than the beloved of his Petrarchan imagination.3 The Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse (licensed 15 February 1549) rallies such readers, and Olive, L’Anterotique , and the Vers lyriques (licensed 20 March 1549 and published with the Deffence the following April) offer models for imitation. Petrarch’s figurations leave an imprint upon Olive and Sonnets d’honneste amour (1552), surely, but also upon Les Regrets, Les Antiquitez de Rome, and Songe, in which a sense of historical destiny inhabits Petrarchan tropes. Du Bellay crafts these sequences to affirm his social and professional allegiances, to announce a concept of civility whose spokesman he would become, to recall parallels in the past and present, and to demonstrate a rhetorical expertise that might help to transform an expanding monarchy into a state and this state into a nation. The program of the Deffence focuses upon the interests of a stratified nobility whose precise roles in the emerging nation still lacked clear definition.4 By the end of the Hundred Years War in 1460 the old military nobility had su- ffered economic and social impoverishment.5 The Italian campaigns of 1494‒1559 enabled many noblemen to recuperate lost ground, despite advances in technology which had made chivalric warfare obsolete.6 After 1535 François I began to appoint princes of the blood to advisory positions in his inner council. In turning to the great families of Montmorency, Bourbon, and Guise, lords of territories at the nation’s military frontiers, he upgraded the policies of Louis XII, who had staffed his council with astute commoners trained in law and the artes dictaminis.7 The military nobility welcomed such appointments .8 Barred from commercial activities to preserve its exemption from taxation, its members sought new routes to prosperity through court service. So too did the lesser provincial nobility, in which Joachim Du Bellay was born. Orphaned at an early age and chronically impoverished, the poet emerged from the cadet branch of a prestigious Angevine family that had bred Cardinals Guillaume and Jean du Bellay to serve as François’s trusted national advisors.9 Throughout his career Du Bellay used these connections to gain a foothold at court. In their new positions at regional parlements or at court, di- ffuse ranks of the elite came into competition with upwardly mobile gentry and bourgeoisie.10 The latter had acquired notarial training in the schools and legal training in the universities, which noblemen rarely attended.11 Some form of education for the lesser nobility might now make a...

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