Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
born Nov. 1, 1636, Paris
died March 13, 1711, Paris
poet and leading literary critic in
his day, known for his influence in
upholding classical standards in both
French and English literature.
He was the son of a government
official who had started life as a
clerk. Boileau made good progress at the
Collège d’Harcourt and was encouraged to
take up literary work by his brother
Gilles Boileau, who was already
established as a man of letters.
He began by writing satires (c.
1658), attacking well-known public
figures, which he read privately to his
friends. After a printer who had managed
to obtain the texts published them in
1666, Boileau brought out an
authenticated version (March 1666) that
he toned down considerably from the
original. The following year he wrote
one of the most successful of
mock-heroic epics, Le Lutrin, dealing
with a quarrel of two ecclesiastical
dignitaries over where to place a
lectern in a chapel.
In 1674 he published L’Art poétique,
a didactic treatise in verse, setting
out rules for the composition of poetry
in the classical tradition. At the time,
the work was considered of great
importance, the definitive handbook of
classical principles. It strongly
influenced the English Augustan poets
Dr. Johnson, John Dryden, and Alexander
Pope. It is now valued more for the
insight it provides into the literary
controversies of the period.
In 1677 Boileau was appointed
historiographer royal and for 15 years
avoided literary controversy; he was
elected to the Académie Française in
1684. Boileau resumed his disputatious
role in 1692, when the literary world
found itself divided between the
so-called ancients and moderns (see
ancients and moderns). Seeing women as
supporters of the moderns, Boileau wrote
his antifeminist satire Contre les
femmes (“Against Women,” published as
Satire x, 1694), followed notably by Sur
l’amour de Dieu (“On the Love of God,”
published as Epitre xii, 1698).
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. He also translated the classical
treatise On the Sublime, attributed to
Longinus. Ironically, it became one of
the key sources of the aesthetics of
Romanticism.
