Le Moyne, Pierre (1602-71). French Jesuit moralist and poet. He was attacked, unfairly, by Pascal in the Lettres provinciales. Heroic virtue is a favourite theme with him, for instance in La Galerie des femmes fortes, and in his Saint Louis (1653) he attempted to create a national Christian epic. His poetry, though very uneven, is altogether exceptional in the range and power of its imagery, the poet's office being, in his view, to display the wisdom and power of the Creator by revealing the latent symbolism of the world.
[Alan Steele]
