The Reputation of Clément Marot in Renaissance England

Abstract

It should be said at once that whatever his accomplishments as chief poet at the court of François I Clément Marot was never an important figure in Renaissance England. In his own country he was a popular and influential author, and although in La Deffence Du Bellay was to write of him in a tone verging on scorn Marot had in fact done a great deal to liberate French poetry from the Rhétoriqueur tradition and to ‘illustrate’ it with new grace, flexibility, and wit. To be sure, his early work owes much to the Rhétoriqueurs and to the Roman de la Rose, but some years before the Pléiade began its well-publicized program to improve French letters he had already experimented with such forms as the elegy and sonnet and had on occasion attempted intriguing combinations of Petrarchan themes and diction with older French forms.