The Pléiade was a group of 16th-century French poets whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf. They were named after the original Pleiade, a group of seven Alexandrian poets (3rd century B.C.), corresponding to the seven stars of the Pleiades star cluster. Poets are authors of poems. ... Pierre de Ronsard, commonly referred to as Ronsard (September 11, 1524 - December, 1585), was a French poet and prince of poets (as his own generation in France called him). ... Joachim du Bellay (c. ... Jean Antoine de Baïf (1532 - 1589), French poet and member of the Pléiade, was born at Venice. ... Antiquity and modernity stand cheek-by-jowl in Egypts chief Mediterranean seaport Located on the Mediterranean Sea coast, Alexandria (in Arabic, الإسكندرية — al-Iskandariyah) is the chief seaport in Egypt, and that countrys second largest city, and the capital of the Al Iskandariyah governate. ... The Pleiades, also called Open cluster M45, visible from both the northern and southern hemispheres, consists of many bright, hot stars that were all formed at the same time within a large cloud of interstellar dust and gas. ... Star clusters are physically bound systems of stars. ...

• A list by the 12th century Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes gave the following list of the original Alexandrian Pleiad:

1. Theocritus, who wrote the bucolic poems
2. Aratus, who wrote the Phaenomena and other poems
3. Nicander
4. Aeantides - or Apollonius, who wrote the Argonautica
5. Philicus
6. Homerus the younger, son of Andromachus, from Byzantium, a tragedian who wrote 57 plays (there was another Homerus, who I think lived at the same time as Hesiodus, though some also attribute the poems of the ancient Homerus to him)
7. Lycophron [1] (http://www.attalus.org/translate/poets.html).

The initial 'brigade' of La Pléiade came together at the Collège de Coqueret under the tutelege of the famous Hellenist and Latinist Jean Dorat. Among the names associated with the Pléiade are Etienne Jodelle, Pontus de Tyard, Rémy Belleau, Jacques Peletier du Mans, Jean de la Péruse and Guillaume des Autels, as well as many others hovering around the outer circles of the group. John Tzetzes, was a Byzantine poet and grammarian, known to have lived at Constantinople during the 12th century. ... Theocritus, the creator of bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC. Little is known of him beyond what can be inferred from his writings. ... Aratus (Greek Aratos) (circa 315 B.C./310 B.C. - 240 B.C.) was a Macedonian Greek poet, known for his technical poetry. ... Nicander (2nd century BC), Greek poet, physician and grammarian, was born at Claros, near Colophon, where his family held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. ... Apollonius of Rhodes (Apollonius Rhodius), librarian at Alexandria, was a poet, the author of Argonautica, a literary epic retelling of ancient material concerning Jason and the Argonauts quest for the Golden Fleece in the mythic land of Colchis. ... Lycophron was a Greek poet and grammarian. ... Jean Daurat (or Dorat) (Latin, Auratus), (1508 - November 1, 1588) was a French poet and scholar, a member of the Pléiade. ... Etienne Jodelle, seigneur de Limodin (1532-1573), French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris of a noble family. ... Pontus de Tyard (c. ...

Ronsard was generally regarded as the leader of the 'brigade', but their 'manifesto' was penned by Du Bellay ('La Deffense et illustration de la langue françoyse' 1549). In it, Du Bellay detailed a literary philosophy that was unashamedly elitist. The group aimed to break with earlier traditions of French poetry (especially Marot and the grands rhétoriqueurs), and to attempt to ennoble the French language by imitating the Ancients. To this end Du Bellay recommends vernacular innovation of Greek and Roman poetic forms, emulation of specific models, and the creation of neologisms based on Greek and Latin. Among the models favoured by the Pléiade were Pindar, Anacreon, Alcaeus and other poets of the Greek Anthology, as well as Virgil, Horace and Ovid. The ideal was not one of slavish imitation, but of a poet so well-versed in the entire corpus of Ancient literature (Du Bellay uses the metaphor of 'digestion') that he would be able to convert it into an entirely new and rich poetic language in the vernacular. Clément Marot (1496-1544), was a French poet of the Renaissance period. ... This article addresses vernacular language; see also vernacular architecture. ... In linguistics, a neologism refers to a recently created (or coined) word, phrase or usage which can sometimes be attributed to a specific individual, publication, period or event. ... Pindar (or Pindarus) (522 BC – 443 BC), the greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, a village in Thebes. ... Anacreon can refer to: Anacreon (poet), a poet and lyricist from ancient Greece Anacreon (planet), a fictional planet in Isaac Asimovs Foundation Series Anacreon (computer game), a computer game inspired by the Foundation series To Anacreon in Heaven was a drinking song. ... Alcaeus may refer to several ancient Greek figures: in mythology, Alcaeus was the son of Perseus and the father of Amphitryon. ... Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Ancient and Byzantine periods of Greek Literature. ... For other uses see Virgil (disambiguation). ... For other people named Horace, see Horace (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Ovid (disambiguation) Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1640 London edition of Ovids Metamorphoses Publius Ovidius Naso, ( March 20, 43 BC – AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. ... Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular - the speech of the common people. ...

See also

• French poetry