Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
It is my contention that the poetic collection Les Regrets by Joachim Du Bellay is a product of the humanist epistolary heritage. This essay attempts to demonstrate not only the importance of the epistolary and secretarial traditions for our understanding of Les Regrets, but also how Du Bellay uses them to elaborate a new poetics. Specifically, beginning with the epistolary and secretarial traditions in Europe, this study then moves to a discussion of the epistolary genre in French literary history and subsequently to the figure of the secretary in Renaissance poetry before focusing on Du Bellay's correspondance with Ronsard.