[1] He was influenced by the writers of the late 15th century and paved the way for the Pléiade, and is undoubtedly the most important poet at the court of Francis I.

Despite the support of Marguerite de Valois-Angoulême (1492-1549), the king’s sister, his strong leanings toward the Reformation led to several imprisonments and two periods of exile.

His father, Jean Marot (c. 1463-1523), whose more correct name appears to have been des Mares, Marais or Marets, was a Norman from the Caen region and was also a poet.

Jean held the post of escripvain (a cross between poet laureate and historiographer) to Anne of Brittany, Queen of France.

[2] It was the time of the rhétoriqueurs, poets who combined stilted language with a fondness for the allegorical manner of the 15th century and the most complicated and artificial forms of the ballade and the rondeau.

[2] Marot, like most of Marguerite's literary court, was attracted by her grace, her kindness, and her intellectual accomplishments, but there is no grounds for thinking that they had a romantic relationship.

Formidable opposition to both forms of innovation now began to appear, and Marot, never particularly prudent, was arrested on a charge of heresy and lodged in the Grand Châtelet in February 1526.

The imprisonment caused him to write a vigorous poem entitled Enfer (hell), later imitated by his friend Étienne Dolet.

In 1532 he published (it had perhaps appeared three years earlier), under the title of Adolescence Clémentine, the first printed collection of his works, which was very popular and was frequently reprinted with additions.

[2] He passed through Nérac, the court of Navarre, and made his way to Renée, duchess of Ferrara, a supporter of the Protestant Reformation in France—as steadfast as her sister-in-law Marguerite, and even more efficacious, because her dominions were outside France.

At Ferrara his work there included the celebrated Blasons (a descriptive poem, improved upon medieval models), which set all the verse-writers of France imitating them.

He went to Venice, but before very long Pope Paul III remonstrated with Francis I on the severity with which the Protestants were treated, and they were allowed to return to Paris on condition of recanting their errors.

[6] At the same time Marot engaged in a literary quarrel with a poet named François de Sagon, who represented the Sorbonne.

Wilhelm Killmayer set one of his poems in his song cycle Rêveries in 1953,[8] and another in Blasons anatomiques du corps féminin in 1968.