Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

Background

Boileau-Despréaux was born in Paris on November 1, 1636. The 15th child of a well-to-do clerk in the Paris Parlement, Boileau lost his mother at the age of two.

Education

Between the years 1643 and 1652 he received a sound classical education at the collèges of Harcourt and Beauvais. Although tonsured in 1646, he showed no inclination for the ecclesiastical career urged upon him by his family, and went on to study law (1652 - 1656). In 1656 he was admitted to the Paris bar but was soon to abandon forever the legal profession that he had entered less than halfheartedly.

Career

A modest inheritance in 1657 enabled Boileau to give up law and devote the rest of his days to poetry and literary criticism. Between 1660 and 1666 he wrote his first Satires, modeled in part on those of Horace and Juvenal, but exhibiting much originality. His chief innovation was to call bad writers by name, the polite conventions of his age notwithstanding. This liberty, attributable in part to a young man's desire for notoriety, was due primarily to an irrepressible impatience with mediocrity. In an age which regarded literature as no more than an amusing pastime, Boileau attracted wide attention by treating it as an almost sacred occupation. The success of the Satires was immediate; pirated editions soon appeared in France and in Holland. The angry counterattacks of Boileau's victims helped him to put even more prominently before the public eye. Between 1668 and 1677 there appeared a series of Epistles in verse, distinguishable from the Satires only by their title. They exhibited the same rebellious spirit, trenchant wit, and youthful irreverence for the literary hacks of the older generation. In 1674 the Satires and some of the Epistles were reprinted in Boileau's Collected Works. Appearing for the first time in this volume were the "Lectern, " a mock-heroic poem about a dispute between two clerics on the placement of a lectern in a chapel; the translation of the anonymous (though often attributed to Longinus) Greek treatise On the Sublime; and the Art of Poetry. The Art of Poetry, Boileau's most celebrated single work, was for a long time considered a handbook of the classical "rules" which Boileau was supposed to have forced on his refractory contemporaries. In reality, the Art of Poetry added nothing to critical theory that had not been known and readily accessible 50 or 100 years earlier. More important and original than the precepts and definitions that Boileau had the knack of framing in unforgettable Alexandrine couplets was his insistence on the role of intensity and passion in the aesthetic experience. This preoccupation had also motivated his long interest in the Greek treatise On the Sublime. Boileau valued clarity, correctness, and purity of form and diction not as ends in themselves but rather as a means of purging the literary work of all asperities capable of dulling the reader's sensitivity to its emotional impact. Boileau's was the greatest literary and personal success that a man in the seventeenth century could know. Having early in his career caught the notice of Louis XIV, he was to enjoy substantial royal pensions throughout his lifetime. The king is reported always to have taken special delight in having Boileau read to him. In 1677, he was appointed, jointly with his close friend, Jean Racine, to the elevated post of royal historiographer. The chronicle of Louis' reign, at which both poets worked devotedly for many years, was destroyed by fire when only partially completed; owing to Boileau's poor health it was not resumed. It was at the King's insistence that Boileau was elected to the French Academy in 1684. In 1685 Boileau took up residence at Auteuil, now a smart suburb of Paris but then considered the country. There, in semiretirement, he received the most celebrated men of letters and ecclesiastics of the time. Auteuil soon became an essential pilgrimage for aspiring young poets and distinguished travelers from abroad; Joseph Addison has left an enlightening record of one such sojourn at Auteuil. The final consecration of Boileau's fame was guaranteed by Claude Brossette, a young lawyer from Lyon, who played Boswell to the aging poet during his later years. His annotated edition of Boileau's Complete Works appeared in 1716. The exaggerated reminiscences recorded by Brossette are largely responsible for the inaccuracies and myths that accompanied Boileau's fame down to the present century. The naïvenaive scribe of a particularly vain old man, Brossette was made to imagine Boileau as the Legislator of Parnassus who had put down, single-handed, the literary heresies of the older generation. Most of Boileau's writings during the Auteuil period were polemical in nature. In January 1687 Charles Perrault read to the French Academy a poem claiming the cultural superiority of the Century of Louis the Great to ancient Greece and Rome. In reply to this and subsequent attacks on the classical tradition Boileau wrote the Critical Reflections on Longinus which, with much humor and irony, detailed Perrault's often incredible ignorance. With the twelfth Epistle (1695 - 1698) Boileau lashed out, like Pascal before him, at religious casuistry, lampooning with characteristic verve the opinion held by some Jesuits that love of God is not prerequisite to grace. Controversy on this point grew so hot that Louis XIV felt obliged to prohibit publication of a renewed attack by Boileau in the twelfth Satire (1705-1711; published posthumously in 1713). In France Boileau's reputation began to wane in the late eighteenth century and suffered greatly during the romantic rebellion. To this day, however, he is widely read in French schools. The Art of Poetry was translated into English in 1683 by Sir William Soames; the Complete Works in 1712. Much admired during the Augustan period, Boileau won particular praise from Dryden and Pope, the latter being the English writer who most closely approaches Boileau in tone and style. The Essay on Criticism levies frequently on the Art of Poetry. Boileau died in Paris on March 13, 1711. In 1800 his remains were transferred from the Sainte-Chapelle to the Museum of French Monuments and thence, nine years later, to the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Achievements

• Boileau-Despréaux was known for his influence in upholding Classical standards in both French and English literature. Boileau did not create the rules of Classical drama and poetry, although it was long assumed that he had—a misunderstanding he did little to dispel. They had already been formulated by previous French writers, but Boileau expressed them in striking and vigorous terms.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Boileau Œuvres Poétiques (Classic Reprint) (French Edition)

    (Excerpt from Boileau Œuvres Poétiques Les passages les p...)

  • Le Lutrin (French Edition)

    (Ce livre est une oeuvre du domaine public éditée au forma...)

  • Satire X (French Edition)

    (Ce livre est une oeuvre du domaine public éditée au forma...)

  • L'art poétique: précédé d'une notice littéraire et accompagné de notes (French Edition)
  • Oeuvres de Boileau Despreaux V1 (1813) OEUVRES DE BOILEAU DESPREAUX V1 (1813) By Despreaux, Nicolas Boileau ( Author )Mar-19-2010 Paperback

Personality

He was a man of warm and kindly feelings, honest, outspoken and benevolent. Many anecdotes are told of his frankness of speech at court, and of his generous actions. He holds a well-defined place in French literature, as the first who reduced its versification to rule, and taught the value of workmanship for its own sake.

Connections

Father

Gilles Boileau

References

• The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant