Baïf, Jean de

(1532-1589)

   writer

   The natural son of lazarde de baïf, Jean de Baïf was born in venice. As a student of the humanist jean doret, his classmates included joachim du bellay and pierre de ronsard. Together, they formed the "Brigade" (which was to become the pléiade group of poets and writers). Baïf demonstrated his admiration for ancient classical culture by adopting the style of the Latin and Greek playwrights (Le Brave, 1567, after Plautius; Antigone, 1573, after Sophocles). A learned poet, Baïf wrote love poetry in the style of Petrarch (Amours de Méline, 1552) and more spontaneous works (Amours de Francine, 1555), and finally Mimes, enseignements et proverbes (1576, 1581, and posthumous, 1597), which were a varied collection of moral and satirical reflections. A reformer and bold thinker, Baïf conceived the idea of adopting a phonetic orthography and the intimate prosody of antiquity, and maintained that through its vocal quality, poetry should be measured by the same melodic rules as music (this led him to establish, with the endorsement of King charles ix, an academy for poetry and music). Baïf failed, however, in his attempt to introduce foreign phonetic rules into French.