Jean Desmarets

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

French literature
By category
French literary history
Medieval 16th century - 17th century 18th century -19th century 20th century - Contemporary
French Writers
Chronological list Writers by category Novelists - Playwrights Poets - Essayists Short story writers
France Portal
Literature Portal This box: view • talk • edit

Jean Desmarets (or Desmaretz), Sieur de Saint-Sorlin (1595 - October 28, 1676), French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris in 1595.

When he was about thirty he was introduced to Richelieu, and became one of the band of writers who carried out the cardinal's literary ideas. Desmarets's own inclination was to novel-writing, and the success of his romance. And one in 1631 led to his formal admission to the circle that met at the house of Valentine Conrart and later developed into the Académie française. Desmarets was its first chancellor.

It was at Richelieu's request that he began to write for the theatre. In this kind he produced a comedy long regarded as a masterpiece, Les Visionnaires (1637); a prose-tragedy, Erigone (1638); and Scipion (1639), a tragedy in verse. His success led to official preferment, and he was made conseiller du roi, contrôleur-général de l'extraordinaire des guerres, and secretary-general of the fleet of the Levant.

His long epic Clovis (1657) is noteworthy because Desmarets rejected the traditional pagan background, and maintained that Christian imagery should supplant it. With this standpoint he contributed several works in defence of the moderns in the famous quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns.

In his later years Desmarets devoted himself chiefly to producing a quantity of religious poems, of which the best known is perhaps his verse translation of the Office de la Vierge (1645). He was a violent opponent of the Jansenists, against whom he wrote a Réponse à l'insolente apologie de Port-Royal (1666). He died in Paris on the 28th of October 1676.

See also H. Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes (1856), pp. 80-103.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.