Ronsard and the Mutation of Forms Toward an Erasure of the Limits of the Lyrical Stanza

Ronsard appeared on the poetic scene in 1550 with the Quatre premiers livres des Odes, in which the principle of integral strophic regularity was largely maintained. However, as an appendix to that collection, “Le Bocage” paved the way toward an irregularity of new forms, which the author would soon go on to develop in Le Bocage and the Meslanges. We find odes and chansons, where the boundaries of the stanza are blurred, like the long speeches with rhyming couplets (rimes suivies) that the poet would favor in the following decade.