Unlikely exemplars

"This book explores questions of reading and writing practices in the French Renaissance. While the imitation of great masters of the past, such as Petrarch, was a staple of Renaissance poetics, French poets of the mid-1500s, including Saint-Gelais, Du Bellay, Ronsard, Baif, and Magny, often turned to a set of unlikely exemplars: the second-rate poets published in a series of volumes known as the Italian anthologies. Because some of these French poets were also literary theorists who deliberately set themselves apart from their predecessors by their unique vision of proper literary imitation, this book explores to what extent minor model imitation can be construed as an integral part of their poetic project or agenda and how this practice fits into a larger program of imitative practice and writerly concerns in the mid-sixteenth century."--Jacket.