Ronsard, PIERRE DE, French poet, born at the Château de la Poissonnière in Vendôme, September 11, 1524, served the Dauphin and the Duc d'Orleans, and accompanied James V. with his bride, Marie de Lorraine, to Scotland, where he stayed three years. Becoming deaf, he abandoned arms for letters, and at the Collège Coqueret studied with Du Bellay and other members of the famous Pléiade. His Odes (1550) excited violent opposition from the older national school. In 1552 appeared his Amours and the fifth book of his Odes, his Hymns in 1555, in 1560 Œuvres Complètes, and in 1572, just after the St Bartholomew massacre, La Franciade, a fragment of an epic. Charles IX. heaped favours upon the lucky poet, who spent his later years in lettered ease at the Abbey of Croix-Val in Vendôme. He died at his priory of St Cosme at Tours, 27th Dec. 1585.
See editions by Blanchelain (1857-67) and Marty-Laveaux (1887-91); Sainte-Beuve's Œuvres Choisies de Ronsard (1828); and studies by Scheffler (1874), Chalandon (1875), Bizos (1891), and Piéri (1896).