Petrarchan Lyric Subjectivity in Joachim Dubellay's Antiquitez De Rome (Critical Essay‪)‬

The essay focuses on a re-reading of selected sonnets from the opening of Joachim DuBellay's 1558 volume, Les Antiquitez de Rome, in the context of the pervasive adaptations of the Canzoniere's lyric speaker in sixteenth-century French poetry. Using as its centerpieces the Antiquitez's dedicatory poem to King Henri II, the opening sonnet addressed to the Divine Spirits of ancient Rome, and Sonnet 5's imitation of Petrarch's famous "Chi vuol veder" (RVF 248), the essay articulates the subject position of the DuBellay's lyric speaker through his thematic and rhetorical reformulations of the classic Petrarchan inaccessibility crisis within the realms of cultural anachronism and loss. **********