Tanneguy-Le-Fevre-père-dAnne-gravure-de-Bleyswyck

Tanneguy Le Fèvre (Tanaquil usFaber) (1615 – 12 September 1672) was a French

classical scholar Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

. He wrote many books, and translated numerous classical works. Somewhat unusually in this era, he educated his daughter

Anne Dacier Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1647 – 17 August 1720), better known during her lifetime as Madame Dacier, was a French scholar, translator, commentator and editor of the classics, including the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey''. She sought to champion a ...

in Greek and Latin, and she subsequently became the notable classical scholar and translator better known as Madame Dacier.

Life and work

Le Fèvre was born at

Caen Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, he was appointed by

Cardinal Richelieu Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu (; 9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642), known as Cardinal Richelieu, was a French clergyman and statesman. He was also known as ''l'Éminence rouge'', or "the Red Eminence", a term derived from the ...

inspector of the printing-press at the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the '' Venus de Milo''. A central ...

. After Richelieu's death he left Paris, joined the

Reformed Church Calvinism (also called the Reformed Tradition, Reformed Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, or simply Reformed) is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John Cal ...

, and in 1651 obtained a professorship at the Academy of Saumur, which he filled with great success for nearly twenty years. His increasing ill-health and a certain moral laxity (as shown in his judgment on

Sappho Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her Greek lyric, lyric poetry, written to be sung while ...

) led to a quarrel with the

consistory Consistory is the anglicized form of the consistorium, a council of the closest advisors of the Roman emperors. It can also refer to: *A papal consistory, a formal meeting of the Sacred College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church * Consistor ...

, as a result of which he resigned his professorship. Several universities were eager to obtain his services, and he had accepted a post offered him by the

elector palatine The counts palatine of Lotharingia /counts palatine of the Rhine /electors of the Palatinate (german: Kurfürst von der Pfalz) ruled some part of Rhine area in the Kingdom of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire from 915 to 1803. The title was a kin ...

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students ...

, when he died suddenly. One of his children, Anne, became the distinguished classical scholar and translator Madame Dacier. Le Fèvre was a highly cultivated man and a thorough classical scholar. He brought out editions of various Greek and Latin authors: Longinus,

Anacreon Anacreon (; grc-gre, Ἀνακρέων ὁ Τήϊος; BC) was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and erotic poems. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of Nine Lyric Poets. Anacreon wrote all of his poetry in t ...

and

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem '' De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into E ...

and many others. His most important original works are: ''Les Vies des poètes Grecs'' (Lives of the Greek Poets, 1665); ''Méthode pour commencer les humanités Grecques et latines'' (Method to Start the Greek and Latin Humanities, 2nd ed., 1731), of which several English adaptations have appeared, such as Jenkin Thomas Philipps's ''A Compendious Way of Teaching Ancient and Modern Languages'' (1750); and ''Epistolae Criticae'' (1659).

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Le Fevre, Tanneguy 1615 births 1672 deaths Writers from Caen Huguenots French Renaissance humanists French classical scholars 17th-century French writers 17th-century French male writers