Notable members of "La Pléiade" consisted of the following people: The core group of the French Renaissance "Pléiade"—Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf—were young French poets who met at the Collège de Coqueret, where they studied under the famous Hellenist and Latinist scholar Jean Dorat; they were generally called the "Brigade" at the time.
Among the models favoured by the Pléiade were Pindar, Anacreon, Alcaeus and other poets of the Greek Anthology, as well as Virgil, Horace and Ovid.
For some of the members of the Pléiade, the act of the poetry itself was seen as a form of divine inspiration (see Pontus de Tyard for example), a possession by the muses akin to romantic passion, prophetic fervour or alcoholic delirium.
The forms that dominate the poetic production of these poets are the Petrarchan sonnet cycle (developed around an amorous encounter or an idealised woman) and the Horatian/Anacreontic ode (of the "wine, women and song" variety, often making use of the Horatian carpe diem topos - life is short, seize the day).
Ronsard also tried early on to adapt the Pindaric ode into French and, later, to write a nationalist verse epic modelled on Homer and Virgil (entitled the Franciade), which he never completed.