SOURCE: "The Aesthetics of Fragmentation in Ronsard's Franciade," in French Studies, Vol. XLIII, No. 1, January, 1989, pp. 1-11.

In the essay below, Braybrook reassesses the episodic, fragmented quality of the narrative of Ronsard's La Franciade.

La Franciade was Ronsard's only attempt at a full length epic. In it he set out to glorify the French monarchy and to show that the French were descended from the Trojan Francus, the son of Hector rescued from a bloodthirsty Pyrrhus thanks to a sleight of hand on the part of Jupiter. As the rhyme Franciade-Iliade suggests, Ronsard originally intended to produce twenty-four books. He spent years planning his poem: in April 1550, in his Ode de la Paix […]. au Roi, dedicated to Henri II, he made the prophetess Cassandra reveal the outline of the vast work to which he had already turned his thoughts (inspired no doubt by the urgings of Du Bellay's...