Jean Dorat

Biography

In 1537 it leaves its native area to be registered with the Faculté of Arts. This character astonished his contemporaries by his extraordinary memory.

In 1544, the father of Jean Antoine de Baïf engages Dorat like tutor of its son, and his young secretary Pierre de Ronsard. The two friends will be the enthusiastic disciples of the humanistic which made use of the Greek to learn with its pupils the Latin . Ronsard often recognized its debt towards this prodigal man of its knowledge, which “had taught him Poetry”.

It was initially pointed out by French poetries, which were worth to him the favor of François Ier.

When the father of Baïf died, in 1547, one offered to Dorat the station of the main thing of the Collège of Coqueret. In 1549, a newcomer named Joachim of Bellay comes to join the group of its pupils. The deffence and illustration of the French language , true literary bomb, will be made up under the eyes of Dorat. This one sought the honors little and was concerned little with its posthumous glory.

It was named in 1560 professor of Greek to the Collège de France, and was made a great reputation by its Latin and Greek worms.

Nobody collected the Greek, Latin parts and Frenchwomen that Dorat scattered a little everywhere, because each one requested it and it satisfied each one.

In 1586, pupils and friends linked themselves to publish an extremely incomplete whole of its Poemata : they contain Poems, Epigrams, Anagrams, Odes, Eclogues. One notices the Tumulus Cearoli there (Charles IX).

Dorat was very sick, and died two years later. It left two wire and a girl who were also distinguished like poets and scholars.

Its true genius was to make feel with its pupils that beyond the Roman literature there was the Greek heritage to explore. It thus deserves to belong to this " Pleiad " where Ronsard never named it, since it called there only his friends, its followers, and not its Masters. He was almost exclusively a poet of Latin and Greek expression.

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