SOURCE: Della Neva, Jo Ann. “Illustrating the Deffence: Imitation And Poetic Perfection In Du Bellay's Olive.” The French Review: Journal Of The American Association Of Teachers Of French 61, no. 1 (1987): 38-49.

In the essay which follows, Della Neva explores the possible influences upon two of Du Bellay's works

As literary historians have often pointed out, two of Joachim Du Bellay's earliest important works were, in fact, published simultaneously. His Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, [Hereafter referred to as DI] the theoretical work destined to become the chief poetic manifesto of the Pléiade, and his first edition of the Olive, [Hereafter referred to as O] a 50-sonnet petrarchist sequence, were published under the same privilège in 1549.¹ One year later, Du Bellay published a second, expanded version of the Olive, this one containing 115 sonnets in the Petrarchan manner. In his preface to this second Olive, Du...