CORROZET (Gilles).

Le Parnasse des poètes françois modernes, contenant leurs plus riches & graves Sentences, Discours, Descriptions, & doctes enseignemens. Paris, Galiot Corrozet, 1571. In-8, jansenist green morocco, interior lace, gilt edges (Chambolle-Duru). Very rare first edition of this famous collection of poems that Corrozet dedicated to the Poëtes François: Vivez Poëtes sacrez, immortalize your names, Chantez éternellement en ce Parnasse, & le grand Appollon tousjours vivant vous abrevera d'une vive source, qui s'espandra par l'univers de siècle en siècle. It contains some 400 poems or excerpts by various poets (Passerat, Marguerite de Navarre, Melin de Saint-Gelais, Clément Marot, Tahureau, Bonaventure des Périers, Baïf, Du Bellay, Jodelle, Tyard, Des Autels, La Péruse, etc.); those from the Pléiade are especially prominent, especially Ronsard, the Prince of poets, who takes the lion's share of citations, with over half (174). This Parnasse is not an anthology. Verses truncated, cut off, placed end to end: Corrozet calmly apologized for his audacity. He did so to "better bind and join the meaning of poetry and sentences". [...] But Corrozet had, in addition, the ambition to forge, by means of his quotations, a vast moral lesson (J. P. Barbier-Mueller, II, n°78). Marked in ink in the blank of the title. From the Laurent Currie library (bookplate). Spine a little darkened, nerves rubbed. Lachèvre, Recueils collectifs de poésies du XVIe siècle, pp. 88-90. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°904.