Théophile de Viau (159025 September 1626) was a French

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

poet and dramatist.

Life

Born at Clairac, near Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne and raised as a Huguenot, Théophile de Viau participated in the

Huguenot rebellions The Huguenot rebellions, sometimes called the Rohan Wars after the Huguenot leader Henri de Rohan, were a series of rebellions of the 1620s in which French Calvinist Protestants (Huguenots), mainly located in southwestern France, revolted agains ...

in Guyenne from 1615–16 in the service of the Comte de Candale. After the war, he was pardoned and became a brilliant young poet in the royal court. Théophile came into contact with the epicurean ideas of Italian philosopher

Lucilio Vanini Lucilio Vanini (15859 February 1619), who, in his works, styled himself Giulio Cesare Vanini, was an Italian philosopher, physician and free-thinker, who was one of the first significant representatives of intellectual libertinism. He was amon ...

, which questioned the immortality of the soul. (Vanini was accused of heresy and of practising magic, and after having his tongue cut out, was strangled and his corpse burned in Toulouse in 1619.) Because of his heretical views and his

libertine A libertine is a person devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which they see as unnecessary or undesirable, and is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour ob ...

lifestyle, de Viau was banished from France in 1619 and traveled in England, though he returned to the court in 1620. In 1622 a collection of licentious poems, ''Le Parnasse satyrique'', was published under his name, although many of the poems were written by others. However, de Viau was denounced by the Jesuits in 1623 on moral charges, for his bisexuality. He was imprisoned and sentenced to appear barefoot before

Notre Dame Notre Dame, French for "Our Lady", a title of Mary, mother of Jesus, most commonly refers to: * Notre-Dame de Paris, a cathedral in Paris, France * University of Notre Dame, a university in Indiana, United States ** Notre Dame Fighting Irish, th ...

in Paris to be burned alive. While de Viau was in hiding, the sentence was carried out in effigy, but the poet was eventually caught in flight toward England and put in the Conciergerie prison in Paris for almost two years. The trial led to debates among scholars and writers, and 55 pamphlets were published both for and against de Viau. His sentence was changed to permanent banishment and de Viau spent the remaining months of his life in Chantilly under the protection of the

Duke of Montmorency Duke of Montmorency was a title of French nobility that was created several times for members of the Montmorency family, who were lords of Montmorency, near Paris. History The first creation was in 1551 for Anne de Montmorency, Constable of ...

before dying in Paris in 1626.

Writings

De Viau's wrote

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...

poems, sonnets, odes and elegies. His works include one play, ''Les Amours tragiques de Pyrame et Thisbé'' (performed in 1621), the tragic love story of Pyramus and Thisbe which ends in a double suicide. He wrote ''Fragment d'une histoire comique'' (English: ''Fragment of a Comic Novel'', 1623), in which he expressed his literary tastes. He was not a supporter of "the metaphoric excess and lofty erudition" of his contemporaries. But he also thought "sterile" the constraints proposed by would-be reformers such as François de Malherbe. This disregard for constraints probably added to his reputation as a non-conformist.Stedman (2012), pp. 59–61. De Viau's poetic style refused the logical and classicist constraints of François de Malherbe and remained attached to the emotional and the

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

images of the late Renaissance, such as in his ode ''Un corbeau devant moi croasse'' (''A crow before me caws''), which paints a fantastic scene of thunder, serpents and fire (much like a painting by

Salvator Rosa Salvator Rosa (1615 –1673) is best known today as an Italian Baroque painter, whose romanticized landscapes and history paintings, often set in dark and untamed nature, exerted considerable influence from the 17th century into the early 19th ...

). Two of his poems are melancholy pleas to the king on the subject of his incarceration or exile, and this tone of sadness is also present in his ode ''On Solitide'' which mixes classical motifs with an elegy about the poet in the midst of a forest. Théophile de Viau was "rediscovered" by the French Romantics in the 19th century.

Depictions

He is depicted in Roberto Rossellini's film ''Descartes'' as meeting Descartes in the free-thinking salons of Paris before Descartes' departure for Holland in 1618.

References

Sources

* * * Dandrey, Patrick, ed. ''Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: Le XVIIe siècle.'' Collection: La Pochothèque. Paris: Fayard, 1996. * Allem, Maurice, ed. ''Anthologie poétique française: XVIIe siècle.'' Paris: Garnier Frères, 1966.
Oeuvre poétique complete de Théophile de Viau

External links

*
English translations of De Viau's poems
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Viau, Theophile de 1590 births 1626 deaths 17th-century French male writers 17th-century French poets 17th-century French novelists 17th-century French dramatists and playwrights Baroque writers Bisexual men Bisexual writers French letter writers French satirists Huguenots 17th-century LGBT people Sonneteers LGBT dramatists and playwrights French LGBT poets 17th-century letter writers