Education
He attended the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and after his graduation taught in various lycées and at the Sorbonne.
Émile
He attended the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and after his graduation taught in various lycées and at the Sorbonne.
Faguet's literary criticism may be placed halfway between the scientific method of Ferdinand Brunetière and the impressionism of Jules Lemaître, whom he succeeded as a critic on the Journal des Débats. Faguet's critical output was enormous; he published an average of a book a year during the 30 years of his literary activity. Among his best known works are his Etudes littéraires sur le XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe, and XIXe siècles (1885-1893; French Seventeenth-Century Literature and Its European Influence, 1908), Politiques et Moralistes du XIXe siècle (1891-1899; Politicians and Moralists, 1928), Politique comparée de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire (1902), his studies on Flaubert (1899) and on Rousseau (1912). Faguet was above all a curious mind. Primarily interested in ideas, he was attracted by a great variety of subjects, about which he wrote in a lively, witty, imaginative style.