Religion, Nation, Literature: France  by Katherine Maynard,
Washington College  In the middle of the sixteenth century, a
French literary coterie called the Pléiade gathered around a
common poetic manifesto. The work, written by Joachim Du Bellay
and entitled the Defense et illustration de la langue française,
urged the renovation and embellishment of the French vernacular
to raise it to a level equal to Greek or Latin. Closely linked
to the linguistic goal was a national one to put France on the
cultural map (and to prove France's preeminence to the rival
Italians). For the Pléiade, all forms of Ancient poetry were
worthy of imitation, but the epic was the greatest achievement
of the poet (albeit in theory more than in practice!) because,
as Thomas Greene has suggested, the stakes of the epic include
national pride and the dignity of the vernacular language in
which the epic is written. [Note 1] Furthermore, the epic poem
establishes a narrative of nation, a tale that justifies the
existence of the powers th