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| Guillaume du Bartas | |
|---|---|
| Name | Guillaume du Bartas |
| Birth date | 1544 |
| Death date | 1590 |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | French |
| Notable works | La Sepmaine; Le Septième Jour |
Guillaume du Bartas was a French Protestant Huguenot poet of the late Renaissance whose epic religious poems influenced Elizabethan literature, Dutch literature, and Scottish poetry. Born during the reign of Francis I of France and dying under Henry III of France, his career intersected with the French Wars of Religion and the literary currents shaped by figures such as Petrarch, Torquato Tasso, and Philippe Desportes. Du Bartas's work was widely read across courts in Paris, London, Edinburgh, and the Dutch Republic, attracting attention from patrons like Margaret of Navarre and commentators including William Percy and Samuel Purchas.
Born in Saint-Jean-d'Angély during the reign of Henry II of France, du Bartas belonged to a family with ties to the provincial nobility and the Protestant Reformation in Gascony and Poitou. He served at various courts and maintained connections with figures such as Catherine de' Medici, Antoine de Bourbon, and Catherine de Bourbon. His lifetime overlapped with the reigns of Charles IX of France and Henry IV of France, and events like the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye shaped the cultural milieu in which he wrote. Du Bartas traveled to Scotland and corresponded with intellectuals in England and the Low Countries, including exchanges that linked him to Edmund Spenser, John Harington, and George Buchanan. He died in 1590, shortly after the accession struggles that followed Henry III's assassination and during the early career of Jacques Amyot as a notable translator.
Du Bartas's principal works include the cosmographic epic La Sepmaine, ou Création du monde and its continuation Le Septième Jour, both composed in French alexandrines and expanded with theological and natural history digressions. La Sepmaine drew on sources such as the Book of Genesis, the Septuagint, Pliny the Elder, Aristotle, and Isidore of Seville while echoing stylistic models from Dante Alighieri, Virgil, and Homer. He also produced shorter pieces, occasional poems, and panegyrics for patrons like Henri de Navarre and for public events akin to those commemorated by Jean de La Fontaine and Pierre de Ronsard. His lyric output engaged with forms advanced by Clément Marot, Joachim du Bellay, and members of the Pléiade, and his translations and paraphrases intersected with projects by Jacques Peletier and Étienne Pasquier.
Du Bartas wrote in a learned, Latinate register characterized by expansive description, encyclopedic cataloguing, and biblical paraphrase, aligning him with scholarly poets such as Salomon de Caus and Joseph Scaliger. His style combines seventeenth-century scientific curiosity found in André Thevet and Jean Bodin with devotional intensity reminiscent of John Calvin and Girolamo Savonarola. Recurring themes include providence, creation, the harmony of the cosmos, and the conflict between faith and heresy, framed through references to Hebrew scripture, Patristic authorities like Augustine of Hippo, and medieval compendia such as Bartholomeus Anglicus. He employed the alexandrine meter popularized by Marot and formal innovations championed by Ronsard; his ekphrastic passages and natural history lists echo the works of Konrad Gesner and Ulisse Aldrovandi.
During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, du Bartas enjoyed immense popularity in England and Scotland, where translations and adaptations spread his reputation among readers of Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, and George Herbert. English patrons such as Queen Elizabeth I's courtiers and translators including Josuah Sylvester promoted his work; continental admirers included Petrus Ramus sympathizers and members of the Reformed Church in the Dutch Republic. Critics and rivals from the Pléiade—notably Pierre de Ronsard—debated his merits, while later commentators like Voltaire and Denis Diderot reassessed his theological and poetic ambitions. His cosmological scope informed natural philosophy discourses alongside figures such as Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, and his religious epic shaped poetic theology encountered by John Donne and George Herbert.
Du Bartas's legacy persisted in the early modern curricula of academies in Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden University, and Edinburgh University, where his fusion of scripture and natural history influenced exegetical and poetic pedagogy. Commemorations included printed editions, collected works, and references in the correspondence of statesmen like Francis Bacon and James VI and I. Modern scholarship situates him within studies of Reformation literature, Comparative literature, and the history of science, discussed alongside scholars such as Harold Bloom and C. S. Lewis in broader surveys of devotional poetry. His name appears in bibliographies, critical editions, and in exhibitions on Renaissance print culture and Protestant networks.
Category:16th-century French poets Category:French Protestant writers