La mélancolie dans Les Regrets de Du Bellay, sa place parmi les autres humeurs et sa thérapie

The article aims to clarify the point in literary history concerning the composition of the Regrets by Du Bellay, taking into account the sonnets written on the occasion of the poet’s trip to Italy that he later left out of the collection. This enables us to situate melancholy in the context of the function of all the humours in the book. Already the first part, clearly marked by melancholy, anticipates the therapy developed in the next two parts; therefore, the itinerary of the poet and of the book becomes that of a gradual recovery. Melancholy as a temperament constitutes a new point of departure; it could therefore no longer be presented, as was the case of the omitted sonnets, in the form of simple, medically operable humour crises, but as a temperament to be transformed progressively, from the sense of perdition to the salvation of a recovered balance.