The Poet's Odyssey: Joachim du Bellay and the Antiquitez de Rome

This fascinating study traces the artistic development of one of the major poets of the French Renaissance, Joachim Du Bellay (1522-1560). Tucker focuses on how the poet differed from his contemporaries, describes in detail the importance of his move to Rome in 1553, and provides a close analysis of Du Bellay's complex sonnet sequence, Antiquitez de Rome. In assessing the sonnets, Tucker first locates their central importance within the poet's production, then further situates them with the living and scholarly context of Du Bellay's Rome. Throughout, the volume highlights the sonnets' rich intertextual framework in classical, neo-Latin, and vernacular literature, making them more accessible to the modern reader.