Petrus Borel

Borel, Pétrus (pseud. of Joseph-Pierre Borel d'Hauterive) (1809-59). Nicknamed ‘the Lycanthrope’, he was perhaps the most outrageous exponent of the ‘genre frénétique’ practised by the members of the Petit Cénacle. He claimed to draw on the republicanism of 1830 in his rebellious and shocking prose and poems (Rhapsodies, 1831; Champavert, contes immoraux, 1833; Madame Putiphar, 1839), but the anarchy of sentiment and the deliberate playing with literary conventions have more in common with Surrealism (which acknowledged its debt) than with early 19th-c. political literature. In the late 1840s he was for a while a colonial administrator in Algeria.

— Brian Rigby

Borel, Petrus, pseud. of Joseph-Pierre Borel D'Hauterive, 1809–59, French novelist, poet, and translator. Although trained as an architect, he soon turned to writing. Borel was the most extreme of the bousingos, a group of extravagant young romantic artists and writers. He loathed the bourgeoisie and believed in the hatred of men for each other. Among his works, whose aim was to shock, are Rhapsodies (1832) and Madame Putip-her (1839), both of which are horrifying and melodramic.

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