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Jean Chapelain
Jean Chapelain (4 December 1595 – 22 February 1674) was a French poet and critic during the Grand Siècle, best known for his role as an organizer and founding member of the Académie française. Chapelain acquired considerable prestige as a literary critic, but his own major work, an epic poem about Joan of Arc called "La Pucelle," (1656) was lampooned by his contemporary Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux. Background Chapelain was born in Paris. His father wanted him to become a notary, but his mother, who had known Pierre de Ronsard, had decided otherwise. Early education At an early age Chapelain began to qualify himself for literature, learning, under Nicolas Bourbon, Greek and Latin, and teaching himself Italian and Spanish. Tutor Having finished his studies, Chapelain taught Spanish to a young nobleman for a short time, before being appointed tutor to the two sons of Sébastien Le Hardy, lord of la Trousse, ''grand-prévôt de France'', Gouye de Longuemarre, ""Eclaircissemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
17th-century French Literature
17th-century French literature was written throughout the ''Grand Siècle'' of France, spanning the reigns of Henry IV of France, the Regency of Marie de Medici, Louis XIII of France, the Regency of Anne of Austria (and the civil war called the Fronde) and the reign of Louis XIV of France. The literature of this period is often equated with the Classicism of Louis XIV's long reign, during which France led Europe in political and cultural development; its authors expounded the classical ideals of order, clarity, proportion and good taste. In reality, 17th-century French literature encompasses far more than just the classicist masterpieces of Jean Racine and Madame de La Fayette. Society and literature in 17th-century France In Renaissance France, literature (in the broadest sense of the term) was largely the product of encyclopaedic humanism, and included works produced by an educated class of writers from religious and legal backgrounds. A new conception of nobility, modelled on t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Literature
French literature () generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language, by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature. France itself ranks first on the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country. For centuries, French literature has been an object of national pride for French people, and it has been one of the most influential components of the literature of Europe. One of the first known examples of French literature is the Song of Roland, the first major work in a series of poems known as, " chansons de geste". The French language is a Romance language derived from Latin and heavily influenced principally by Celtic and Frankish. Beginning in the 11th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1674 Deaths
Events January–March * January 2 – The French West India Company is dissolved after less than 10 years. * January 7 – In the Chinese Empire, General Wu Sangui leads troops into the Giuzhou province, and soon takes control of the entire territory without a loss. * January 15 – The Earl of Arlington, a member of the English House of Commons, is impeached on charges of popery, but the Commons rejects the motion to remove him from office, 127 votes for and 166 against. * January 19 – The tragic opera '' Alceste'', by Jean-Baptiste Lully, is performed for the first time, presented by the Paris Opera company at the Theatre du Palais-Royal in Paris. * February 19 – England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Its provisions come into effect gradually (''see'' November 10). * March 14 – Third Anglo-Dutch War: Battle of Ronas Voe – The English Royal Navy captures the Dutch East I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1595 Births
Events January–June * January – Mehmed III succeeds Murad III, as sultan of the Ottoman Empire. * January 17 – During the French Wars of Religion, Henry IV of France declares war on Spain. * April 8 (March 29 O.S.) – Combined Taungoo– Lan Na armies break the rebel Thado Dhamma Yaza's siege of Taungoo, in modern-day Myanmar. * April 15 – Sir Walter Raleigh travels up the Orinoco River, in search of the fabled city of '' El Dorado''. * May 18 – The Treaty of Teusina brings to an end the Russo-Swedish War (1590–95). * May 24 – The ''Nomenclator'' of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library. * May 29 – George Somers and Amyas Preston travel to aid Raleigh's El Dorado expedition but failing to meet him instead raid the Spanish Province of Venezuela * June 9 – Battle of Fontaine-Française: Henry IV of France defeats the Spanish, but is nearly killed due to his rashnes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Daniel Huet
image:Portret van Pierre-Daniel Huet Petrus Daniel Huetius (titel op object), RP-P-BI-7523.jpg, P. D. Huetius Pierre Daniel Huet (; la, Huetius; 8 February 1630 – 26 January 1721) was a French churchman and scholar, Editing, editor of the Delphin Classics, founder of the Académie de Physique in Caen (1662-1672) and Bishop of Soissons from 1685 to 1689 and afterwards of Avranches. Life He was born in Caen in 1630, and educated at the Society of Jesus, Jesuit school there. He also received lessons from a Protestant pastor, Samuel Bochart. By the age of twenty he was recognized as one of the most promising scholars of his time. In 1651 he went to Paris, France, Paris, where he formed a friendship with Gabriel Naudé, conservator of the Mazarin Library. In the following year Samuel Bochart, being invited by Queen Christina of Sweden to her court at Stockholm, took his friend Huet with him. This journey, in which he saw Leiden, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, as well as Stockholm, resul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Southey
Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a radical but became steadily more conservative as he gained respect for Britain and its institutions. Other romantics such as Byron accused him of siding with the establishment for money and status. He is remembered especially for the poem "After Blenheim" and the original version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Life Robert Southey was born in Wine Street, Bristol, to Robert Southey and Margaret Hill. He was educated at Westminster School, London (where he was expelled for writing an article in ''The Flagellant'', a magazine he originated,Margaret Drabble ed: ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' (6th edition, Oxford, 2000), pp 953-4. attributing the invention of flogging to the Devil), and at Balliol College, Oxford. Southey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Saintsbury
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA (23 October 1845 – 28 January 1933), was an English critic, literary historian, editor, teacher, and wine connoisseur. He is regarded as a highly influential critic of the late 19th and early 20th century. Biography Born in Lottery Hall, Southampton, he was educated at King's College School, London, and at Merton College, Oxford, where he achieved a first class BA degree in Classical Mods, (1865), and a second class in ''literae humaniores'' (1867). He left Oxford in 1868 having failed to obtain a fellowship, and briefly became a master at the Manchester Grammar School, before spending six years in Guernsey as senior classical master of Elizabeth College, where he began his literary career by submitting his first reviews to '' The Academy''. From 1874 until he returned to London in 1876 he was headmaster of the Elgin Educational Institute, with a brief period in 1877 on ''The Manchester Guardian''. From the early 1880s until 1894 he wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guirlande De Julie
The ''Guirlande de Julie'' (, ''Julie's Garland'') is a unique French manuscript of sixty-one ''madrigaux'', illustrated with painted flowers, and composed by several poets ''habitués'' of the Hôtel de Rambouillet for Julie d'Angennes and given to her on her name day in May 1641. The 1641 manuscript was bought by the ''Bibliothèque nationale de France'' in 1989 and is now kept in the ''Département des Manuscrits'' of the BnF. The salon of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet (1588–1665), wife of (1577–1652), was the first and most brilliant Parisian literary salon of the first half of the 17th century, at its height between 1620 and 1645. The Hôtel de Rambouillet, as it was called, was frequented by renowned ''précieuses'', writers, nobles and "robins". One of its ''habitués'', Charles de Sainte-Maure, marquis de Montausier (1610–1690), had been in love with the daughter of the marquis and marquise de Rambouillet, Julie d'Angennes (1606–1671), since he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gédéon Tallemant Des Réaux
Gédéon Tallemant, Sieur des Réaux (7 November 1619 – 6 November 1692) was a French writer known for his ''Historiettes'', a collection of short biographies. Biography Born at La Rochelle, he belonged to a wealthy middle-class Huguenot family; the name des Réaux was derived from a small property he purchased in 1650. When he was about eighteen, he was sent to Italy with his brother François, abbé Tallemant. On his return to Paris, Tallemant took his degrees in civil law and Canon law, and his father obtained for him the position of ''conseiller au parlement''. Disliking his profession, he decided to seek an alternative income by marriage with his cousin Elisabeth de Rambouillet. His half-brother had married a d'Angennes, and this connection secured for Tallemant an introduction to the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Madame de Rambouillet was no admirer of King Louis XIII, and she gratified Tallemant's curiosity with stories of the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII that were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gilles Ménage
Gilles Ménage (; 15 August 1613 – 23 July 1692) was a French scholar. Biography He was born at Angers, the son of Guillaume Ménage, king's advocate at Angers. A good memory and enthusiasm for learning carried him quickly through his literary and professional studies, and he practised at the bar at Angers before he was twenty. In 1632, he pleaded several causes before the '' parlement'' of Paris. Illness caused him to abandon the legal profession for the church. He became prior of Montdidier without taking holy orders, and lived for some years in the household of Cardinal de Retz (then coadjutor to the Archbishop of Paris), where he had leisure for literary pursuits. Some time after 1648, he quarrelled with his patron and withdrew to a house in the cloister of Notre-Dame de Paris, where he gathered round him on Wednesday evenings those literary assemblies which he called “Mercuriales.” Jean Chapelain, Paul Pellisson, Valentin Conrart, Jean François Sarrazin and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chanson De Geste
The ''chanson de geste'' (, from Latin 'deeds, actions accomplished') is a medieval narrative, a type of epic poem that appears at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known poems of this genre date from the late 11th and early 12th centuries, shortly before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the troubadours and trouvères, and the earliest verse romances. They reached their highest point of acceptance in the period 1150–1250.Hasenohr, 242. Composed in verse, these narrative poems of moderate length (averaging 4000 lines) were originally sung, or (later) recited, by minstrels or jongleurs. More than one hundred ''chansons de geste'' have survived in approximately three hundred manuscripts''La Chanson de Roland,'' 12. that date from the 12th to the 15th century. Origins Since the 19th century, much critical debate has centered on the origins of the ''chansons de geste'', and particularly on explaining the length of time between the composition of the ''chansons'' a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Racine
Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western tradition and world literature. Racine was primarily a tragedian, producing such "examples of neoclassical perfection" as ''Phèdre'', ''Andromaque'', and ''Athalie''. He did write one comedy, '' Les Plaideurs'', and a muted tragedy, ''Esther'' for the young. Racine's plays displayed his mastery of the dodecasyllabic (12 syllable) French alexandrine. His writing is renowned for its elegance, purity, speed, and fury, and for what American poet Robert Lowell described as a "diamond-edge", and the "glory of its hard, electric rage". Racine's dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both plot and stage. Biography Racine was born on 21 December 1639 in La Ferté-Milon ( Aisne) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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