L'invention lyrique. Visages d'auteur, figures du poète et voix lyrique chez Ronsard

Abstract

In their concern to promote the dignity of common language literature, Renaissance poets restore the ancient category of the lyric. Like Horace, Ronsard defines his lyrical identity and constructs his poetics through an emulation of the lyrical poets of antiquity. In 1550, faithful to the multifaceted musical poetics of Pindar and to the Horatian model of autobiographical subjectivity, Ronsard aims at giving birth to French lyrical poetry in writing his odes. Then, inspired notably by the discovery of the pseudo-Anacreon, he promotes a new conception of lyrical poetry, open to diverse forms and based on voice rather than musical form. Hence, the lyrical voice in Ronsard's poetry creates a resounding echo in his work which puts an end to a purely generic and hypertextual conception of lyrical poetry. The primacy of voice establishes the poet's authority and is to be observed in mythology, in the images of inspiration and in enunciative polyphony. It contributes to Ronsard's literary canonization which provides the model for a new lyricism. At the same time a form, a genre and a mode, the Ronsardian lyrical category is at the junction of ancient and modern lyrical poetics.