- Jean Lemaire de Belges
Jean Lemaire de Belges (c. 1473 – c. 1525) was a Walloon poet and historian who lived primarily in
France .He was born in Hainaut (Hainault), the godson and possibly a nephew of
Jean Molinet , and spent some time with him atValenciennes , where the elder writer held a kind of academy of poetry. Lemaire in his first poems calls himself a disciple of Molinet. In certain aspects he does belong to the school of the "grands rhétoriqueurs " ("rhetoricians"), but his great merit as a poet is that he emancipated himself from the affectations of his masters. This independence of the Flemish school he owed in part perhaps to his studies at theUniversity of Paris and to the study of the Italian poets atLyon , a centre of the FrenchRenaissance . In 1504 he was attached to the court of Margaret of Austria, duchess ofSavoy , afterwardsRegent of theNetherlands . For this princess he undertook more than one mission toRome where he came into contact with the culture of the ItalianRenaissance ; he became her librarian and a canon of Valenciennes. To her were addressed his most original poems, "Lettres de l'amant vert", the "amant vert" (green lover) being a green parrot belonging to his patroness. This latter piece was subsequently utilised in the sublimely melancholic Soubz ce tumbel (Within this tomb) byPierre de la Rue . It is an intense elegiac farewell to Margaret's 'green lover'."Within this tomb, which is a harsh, locked cell,"
"Lies the green lover, the very worthy slave"
"Whose noble heart, drunk with true, pure love,"
"Losing its lady, cannot bear to live."
Lemaire gradually became more French in his sympathies, eventually entering the service of
Anne of Brittany , wife of Louis XII, and supporting Louis's ambitions to create a church relatively independent of thePope . His prose "Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye" (1510-1514), largely adapted fromBenoit de Sainte More , is a novel-like history that connects the Burgundian royal house withHector using fictional characters.Lemaire probably died before 1525.
Étienne Pasquier ,Pierre de Ronsard andJoachim du Bellay all acknowledged their indebtedness to him. In his love for antiquity, his sense of rhythm, and even the peculiarities of his vocabulary he anticipated the humanist movement led by Du Bellay and Ronsard, the "Pléiade".References
*1911
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