Palissot de Montenoy, Charles (1730-1814). French playwright and satirist. His early tragedy Zarès (1751) received only three performances, but substantial success came with Les Tuteurs in 1754. 1755 saw the performance of his Le Cercle, ou les Originaux, which particularly pilloried Rousseau. He again attacked the philosophes, especially Diderot, in Les Philosophes (1760), which, thanks to his protectors, received 14 performances in its first run at the Comédie-Française, and followed this with another attack, the poem La Dunciade, in 1764. His animosity towards the philosophes, particularly Diderot, was motivated chiefly by what he saw as the sterility of philosophical language and the philosophes' uncritical admiration of each other's works. His Petites lettres sur les grands philosophes of 1757 include an intemperate attack on Diderot's Le Fils naturel.
[John Dunkley]
