Guillaume Colletet (12 March 1598 – 11 February 1659) was a French poet and a founder member of the
Académie française
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
. His son was
François Colletet.
Biography
Colletet was born and died in Paris. He had a great reputation among his contemporaries and enjoyed the patronage of several important people, including
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 ...
, which whom he sometimes collaborated and who once gave him 600 livres for six verses.
Colletet married, in succession, three female servants, one of whom, ''Claudine Le Nain'', he attempted to pass off as a poet in her own right, himself composing works which she then signed. When he realised he was dying, he produced a poem stating that she was giving up poetry following her husband's death; but no one was fooled.
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine (, , ; 8 July 162113 April 1695) was a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his ''Fables'', which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Euro ...
wrote an epigram on the subject.
Works
*'' Divertissements '' ;
*poems (tragedies, pastorals, etc.), including '' le Banquet des Poètes '' (1646) ;
*''
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mille ...
me '' (1653) ;
*'' Histoire des poètes français ''.
*Much-esteemed treatises on moral poetry, sonnets and eclogues, gathered under the title ''d'Art poétique'', 1658
*Translations, including of the ''Couches de la Vierge'' by
Jacopo Sannazaro
Jacopo Sannazaro (; 28 July 1458 – 6 August 1530) was an Italian poet, humanist and epigrammist from Naples.
He wrote easily in Latin, in Italian and in Neapolitan, but is best remembered for his humanist classic '' Arcadia'', a masterwork ...
and of works by
Scévole de Sainte-Marthe.
See also
* ''
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 giv ...
''
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Colletet, Guillaume
Writers from Paris
1598 births
1659 deaths
17th-century French male writers
17th-century French poets
Members of the Académie Française
17th-century French dramatists and playwrights