Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England by Walter W. Greg
page 72 of 656 (10%)
page 72 of 656 (10%)
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and enduring works.
VIII In France the interest of pastoralism, from our present point of view, is summed up in the work of one man--Clément Marot. It is he who forms the central figure on the stage of French poetry between the final collapse of the medieval tradition and the ceasing of Villon's song earlier, and later the full burst of the renaissance in the work of the Pléiade. While belonging ostensibly to the literary circle of Margaret of Navarre, Marot appears to have combined in his own person a strange number of conflicting tendencies. His patroness followed the pastoral tradition in her imitation of Sannazzaro's _Salices_ and her lament on the death of her brother François I, and rehandled an already favourite theme in her _comédie_ of human and divine love. Marot, on the other hand, while equally interested in pastoral, betrayed in his verse little direct influence of the Italians, and invariably impressed his own individuality upon his subject. In his early work he continued the tradition of the _Romance of the Rose_; later he voiced, somewhat crudely may be, the ideals of the renaissance. By nature an easy-going _bon vivant_, his only real affection appears to have been for the faithless mistress of his early years, whom a not very probable tradition identifies with Diane de Poitiers. He had no higher ambition than to retain unmolested a comfortable post at the court of Francis. Yet he was destined by a strange irony of fate to pass his days as a wanderer on the face of the earth, the homeless pilgrim of a cause he no wise had at heart. He was accused by the Sorbonne, and ultimately driven into the profession, of the heresy of Calvinism. Expelled from the |
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