Jean
Lemaire de Belges
born c. 1473, Bavai, Hainaut [now in
Belgium]
died c. 1525
Walloon poet, historian, and pamphleteer
who, writing in French, was the last and
one of the best of the school of poetic
rhétoriqueurs (“rhetoricians”) and the
chief forerunner, both in style and in
thought, of the Renaissance humanists in
France and Flanders.
Lemaire led a wandering life in the
service of various princes and was often
at the court of Margaret of Austria, the
regent of the Netherlands; he was her
librarian at Malines. An innovator of
wide intellectual curiosity, he had a
sense of literary beauty that set his
works apart from those of his
contemporaries. Most of his poems are
occasional pieces in memory of a prince.
His Épitres de l’amant vert (1505;
“Letters of a Green Lover”) contains two
charming and witty letters in light
verse describing the grief of Margaret
of Austria’s parrot during her
mistress’s absence. Lemaire traveled in
Italy and was an admirer of Italian
culture. His La Concorde des deux
langages (“The Harmony of the Two
Languages,” after 1510; modern ed. 1947)
attempts to reconcile the influence of
the Italian Renaissance with French
tradition. His most extensive work is
Les Illustrations de Gaule et
singularitéz de Troye (1511, 1512, 1513;
“Illustrations of Gaul and Peculiarities
of Troy”), a legendary prose romance
published in three books; it
demonstrates an exuberant imagination
and a modern appreciation of classical
antiquity
