Joachim du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay (c. 1522–1560) was a French Renaissance poet, critic, and co-founder of the Pléiade alongside Pierre de Ronsard. Born at the Château de la Turmelière in Anjou, he studied law at Poitiers and humanist letters in Paris, where he was inspired by classical Greek and Roman models.

In 1549, Du Bellay authored the revolutionary literary manifesto La Défense et illustration de la langue française, which passionately argued that French was fully capable of matching classical tongues through innovation, enrichment, and lexical borrowing. During four years spent in Rome as secretary to his cousin Cardinal Jean du Bellay, he composed his melancholic masterpiece Les Regrets, expressing profound nostalgia for his beloved native Loire Valley ('Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage').