Jean Marot

Jean Marot (actually probably more [h ] to Desmarets; * 1450 near Caen, † 1526 in Paris) was a French merchant, courtier and author. He was the father of the more famous courtier and author Clément Marot.

Jean Marot apparently had no formal education, but seems to have his literary knowledge acquired self-taught by reading French-language poet and historiographer.

In his younger years he must have gone out of the domestic Normandy to Cahors in southern France, where he married and is operated as a business man, without doubt, also exercised his pen as a poet. Here also was born in 1496, his son Clément.

About a noble lady, who liked his verses, and her husband received Marot contact with the French queen, Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII .. in 1506 he became its secretary and poet laureate. Later he accompanied the king in his campaigns against Genoa and Venice, with the order to present them in the form of rhymed chronicles from the point of view and in terms of his master, ie political legitimacy.

After the death of Louis (1515 ), he was taken into the service of his successor, Francis I and got the post of royal chamberlain, which he held until his death (and that was soon after transferred to his son Clément ).

Jean Marot's texts are mostly in the tradition of the so-called Rhétoriqueurs, a school of poets of the 15th century, the hochrhetorisierte, today most bombastic acting occasional poetry especially for rulers and their courts wrote, for example, for the French royal court or the predominantly French-speaking court of the rich and powerful dukes of Burgundy.