Pontus de Tyard

Pontus de Tyard (also Thyard, Thiard) (c. 1521 – 23 September 1605) was a French poet and priest, a member of "La Pléiade".

He was one of the first to write sonnets in the French language (preceded by Clément Marot and Mellin de Saint-Gelais).

Tyard contributed to the poetic and metaphysical program of La Pléiade by elaborating, in his Solitaire Premier, ou Prose des Muses, et de la fureur poétique (1552),[1] a full theory of divine fury, derived in large part from the Latin translations and commentaries by the neo-platonic author Marsilio Ficino of Plato's dialogues Ion and (especially) Phaedrus at the end of the 15th century.

He was a zealous defender of King Henry III of France against the claims of the House of Guise.

Nevertheless, he survived all the other members of the Pléiade and lived to see the onslaught made on their doctrines by François de Malherbe.