French poet, born at the château of La Fresnaye, near Falaise in Normandy, in 1536. He studied the humanities at Paris and law at Poitiers and Bourges. He fought in the civil wars under Marshal Matignon and was wounded at the siege of Saint-Lô (1574). Most of his life was spent at Caen, where he was president, and he died there in 1608. La Fresnaye was a disciple of Ronsard, but, while praising the reforms of the Pléiade, he laid stress on the continuity of French literary history. He was a student of the trouvères and the old chroniclers, and desired to see French poetry set on a national basis. These views he expounded in an Art poétique, begun at the desire of Henry III. in 1574, but not published until 1605.
His Foresteries appeared in 1555; his Diverses poésies, including the Art poétique, the Satyres françoises, addressed to various distinguished contemporaries, and the Idylles, with some epigrams and sonnets, appeared in 1605. Among his political writings may be noted Pour la monarchie du royaume contre la division (1569).
The Art poétique was edited by G. Pellissier in 1885. It is summarized for English readers in vol. ii. of Mr. George Saintsbury’s History of Criticism. A notice of the poet by J. Travers is prefixed to an edition of the Œuvres diverses (Caen, 1872).
