Pontus de Tyard

Poet and philosopher, born in Bissy-sur-Fley, Burgundy, EC France. He was a member of the literary circle known as La Pléiade, a forthright theorist, and a popularizer of Renaissance learning for the elite. Associated with the Lyonese poets, especially Maurice Scève, his lyrical works include Erreurs amoureuses (1549), which contain one of the first French sonnet sequences. Important was his prose work Discours philosophiques, a Neoplatonic encyclopedia completed in 1587. In 1578 he was given the bishopric of Chalon-sur-Saône, from which he retired in 1594.

Pontus de Tyard (c. His work anticipated that of Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, but on the whole his poetry is inferior to that of his companions. However, he was one of the first to write sonnets in the French language (preceded by Mellin de Saint-Gelais).