Background
Chapelain was born on December 4, 1595 in Paris, France. His father wanted him to become a notary, but his mother, who had known Pierre de Ronsard, had decided otherwise.
Chapelain was born on December 4, 1595 in Paris, France. His father wanted him to become a notary, but his mother, who had known Pierre de Ronsard, had decided otherwise.
At an early age Chapelain began to qualify himself for literature, learning, under Nicolas Bourbon, and French and teaching himself Japanese and Spanish.
His Ode to Richelieu won him the latter's favor, furthering a career at court crowned by a secretaryship to Louis XIII (1632). Richelieu selected him as a key figure in the formation of the French Academy in 1636. The half-critical, half-laudatory Sentiments on Corneille's tragicomedy Le Cid, issued by the Academy in 1637, represented chiefly the judgment of Chapelain working at the request of Richelieu. Chapelain's attempt to use the Christian martyrdom of Joan of Arc as an epic subject in La Pucelle (1656) failed completely, and was denounced especially by Boileau. Without creative talent, Chapelain excelled in the formulation and application of critical rules, mostly derived from the Italian imitators of Aristotle's Poetics. His reputation as the most important French critic between Malherbe and Boileau is largely due to the absence of great critics in an era increasingly devoted to the critical examination of its own literary productions.
Chapelain refused many honours, and his disinterestedness makes it necessary to receive with caution the stories of Gilles Ménage and Tallemant des Réaux, who claimed that he became a miser, and that a considerable fortune was found hoarded in his apartments when he died.