The French critic and writer Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711) is best known for the theory of poetics expressed in his "Art poétique." Through this work he became the foremost exponent of French literary classicism.

Nicholas Boileau was born in Paris, the son of a registrar in the Grande Chambre of Parlement. (His later claims to nobility could be substantiated only by fraudulent documents.) Boileau's mother died when he was 19 months old, and his childhood is reputed to have been very unhappy. After attending the Collèges d'Harcourt and de Beauvais, Boileau entered theological school in 1652. Quickly tiring of these studies, he turned to law, his family's traditional vocation. He was admitted as an advocate in 1656, but after his father's death in 1657, he decided to pursue a literary career. Boileau's three older brothers, especially Gilles, who became a critic and translator, were also active in the literary world.

Young Satirist

As a young man, Boileau enjoyed reciting his virulent satires between drinks at various Paris cafés. His physical description indicates that he was probably not attractive. He was short and had thin legs, humped shoulders, a large nose, and possibly an asthmatic condition.

Boileau's first collection, Satires, modeled on the works of the Latin poet Juvenal and dating from 1657, began as daring jibes not meant for publication. The poems were usually inspired by the political, social, and literary events of the day. Satire I complains of corruption brought about by the major financiers of that time. Satire II supports his friend the dramatist Molière against the Précieuses, a coterie of popular writers whose works were written in a highly ornate and artificial style. Although Satires III and IV are famous because of their picturesque portrayals of frustrating city life and of country bumpkins at a banquet, Satires VII and IX indicate more accurately the formation of Boileau's literary tastes.

The clandestine publication of Satires in 1666 crystallized forces against Boileau. His most formidable enemy, in addition to a number of literary figures, was Colbert, minister in charge of awarding state pensions to poets. The attacks on Boileau were violent, and he was accused of cynicism, debauchery, plagiarism, and blasphemy.

Concept of Poetry

Boileau's transition from satirist to literary theorist is marked by the Epistles, modeled on the works of the Latin poet Horace. Epistles I and IV praised King Louis XIV's policies and contributed to Boileau's reconciliation with the governing powers. He was presented to Louis in 1674 and was assured of a pension and publication rights. Boileau did not, however, drop the satirical vein; in the Lutrin a quarrel among Paris church canons is made ridiculous through his treatment of it in a serious and elevated style.

During this time Boileau had been reading his Art poétique in prominent Paris salons, where it met with immediate success. The tenets of French classicism had been formulated from 1630 to 1650, and thus the Art poétique did not dictate the rules of this literary movement. In fact, the ideas in this work had also been expressed by a number of Boileau's contemporaries. But Boileau was original in that he captured the concept of classicism in a concise, forceful, and poetic form. In addition, his literary judgments were remarkably astute; he recognized the genius of, among others, the contemporary playwrights Molière and Racine.

The Art poétique is divided into four parts: style and versification, the less important poetic genres, the three great genres (tragedy, epic, comedy), and the vocation of the poet in general. Boileau placed great importance on certain often-repeated key words, such as raison (reason), nature (nature), verité (truth), and vraisemblance (likeness to truth). He believed that "Only the true is beautiful" and that the poet's role lies in the discovery and presentation of truth. Sincerity and a great desire for ideal truth are necessary to arrive at the essence of things. And once found, truth must be communicated by the poet in a style marked by simplicity, clarity, and grandeur, such as that found in Homer and the Bible. These rules on style are similar to those of the Greek philosopher Longinus, whose On the Sublime was translated by Boileau, but are opposed to those advocated by the précieuses. During the 18th century Boileau's theories influenced literature in England, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Russia.

Polemics of Later Years

Toward the end of Boileau's life the famous quarrel between two factions of the French literary world, the Ancients and the Moderns, called into question the nature of literary history and the cultural achievement of 17th-century France. The Ancients held that, since the greatest possible literary excellence had been achieved by the Greek and Latin authors, later writers should imitate the content and style of ancient masterpieces. Boileau's translation of Longinus put him on the side of the Ancients. The Moderns, however, recognized progress in the arts and exalted the French tragédie galante and the Christian epic. They were more socially sophisticated than Boileau's circle of friends and had the support of influential Parisian women. Thus when Boileau turned again to satire after a period of silence during his term as royal historian, he directed his vehemence against women (Satire X).

Boileau's last satire (Satire XII), a brilliant portrait of the hypocrisy in society's morals and religion, involved him in still another controversy with the government. His numerous friends and his literary importance did little to stave off his growing bitterness. In 1711, 2 months after a final refusal by the state to allow the printing of his satire, Boileau died of pleurisy.

Further Reading

The most complete and recent works on Boileau are in French. Books in English deal with specialized subjects; for example, A. F. B Clark, Boileau and the French Classical Critics in England, 1660-1830 (1925), and Jules Brody, Boileau and Longinus (1958). Recommended for general historical background is E. B. O. Borgerhoff, The Freedom of French Classicism (1950).

Additional Sources

Haley, Marie Philip, Sister, Racine and the Art poetique of Boileau, New York: Octagon Books, 1976, 1938.

Pocock, Gordon, Boileau and the nature of neo-classicism, Cambridge Eng.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

For more information on Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, visit Britannica.com.

Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, known to contemporaries as ‘Despréaux’, now always known as ‘Boileau’ (1636-1711). Poet, satirist, and critic. The label ‘régent [or ‘législateur’] du Parnasse’, which Boileau humorously applied to himself, has stuck; he was by turns venerated (in the 18th c.) and reviled (in the 19th) as the schoolteacher or lawgiver of French classicism. The reality is more interesting.

He came from the legal bourgeoisie and lived all his life in or near Paris. A childhood operation left him impotent, and he never married. After studying law (which he hardly ever practised), he threw himself into literary life. An outspoken and often bitter man—reputedly the model for Alceste in Molière's Le Misanthrope—he made many enemies, including précieux circles and the writers pensioned by Colbert. His aggressive temperament is evident in his Satires, of which the first nine were written between 1660 and 1667, followed by three more between 1692 and 1708. The tenth satire concerns women and the twelfth is an attack on Jesuit casuistry; in the early ones the targets are sometimes socio-political (tax-farmers, corrupt officials, etc.), but usually literary. The same vein is exploited in his mischievous Dialogue des héros de roman (composed c.1666), an attack on the roman héroïque.

Boileau began in a bohemian way; some of his early friends (including Molière and Chapelle) were close to the world of the libertins. Soon, however, he was taken in hand by respectable backers, notably the Lamoignon group, who channelled his energies away from satire to moral epistles and a more serious interest in poetics. He wrote 12 Épîtres between 1668 and 1696, and in 1674 published his Art poétique, together with an influential translation of the Traité du sublime of pseudo-Longinus. The Art poétique (in four cantos) combines the personal mockery of the Satires with an exposition of what we now call ‘classicism’; Boileau stresses the truthful imitation of nature, the value of ‘reason’, the need for both inspiration and control, and discusses more technical questions of versification and the poetic genres. The translation of Longinus sets him among those who preferred the high ambitions of classical literature to modern politeness. A critic engaged in the debates of the day, he nailed his colours to the mast in his defence of Racine and Molière.

He had cultivated the royal favour in dedications and epistles, and in 1677, together with Racine, a close friend of his later years, he was appointed ‘historiographe du roi’. The two poets accompanied the king on his campaigns, and produced a Précis historique des campagnes de Louis XIV, but little else. The awkward Boileau, who did not hide his sympathy for the Jansenists, was not a successful courtier, though he did exploit this apparent lack of savoirfaire adroitly in a number of court poems. After 1688, having been elected to the Académie Française in 1684, he was the chief of the ancien camp in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, attacking Perrault vigorously in his 12 Réflexions critiques sur quelques passages du rhéteur Longin (1694-1713).

Boileau is important for his influence on literary taste in France and else where in the 18th c.—and equally for the way he was later taken as an emblem of classicism at its most limited. But he was also a poet. His poetic work is almost all in alexandrine couplets, which he uses with considerable mastery, combining often exuberant wit with such memorable, if blunt, formulations as: ‘Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement.’ The Satires, épîtres, and Art poétique are in their different ways all verse discourses which vary between the playful and the solemn, the idiosyncratic and the commonplace. Boileau's favourite self-image was that of ‘l'ami du vrai’, the fearless truth-teller and enemy of humbug, inflation, and equivocation. He believed in the role of the satirist as the scourge of bad writing. But he was also wary of the role of teacher or preacher, and his work is notable for its tone of ironic self-deprecation. This no doubt prevented him from writing the elevated poetry that he so admired in the ancients. Instead, he composed a mock-heroic epic in six cantos, Le Lutrin (1674-83), which tells a ridiculous story of petty clerical squabbles in a parody of high tragic verse. It can be seen as a model for Pope's Rape of the Lock, just as the Art poétique prefigures his Essay on Criticism.

[Peter France]

Bibliography

• Boileau, Œuvres complètes, ed. C.-H. Boudhors, 7 vols. (1934-43)
• J. Brody, Boileau and Longinus (1958)
• G. Pocock, Boileau and the Nature of Neo-classicism (1980)

(nēkôlä' bwälō'-dāprāō') , 1636–1711, French literary critic and poet. He was the spokesman of classicism, drawing his principles from his contemporaries, among them his friends Racine, Molière, and La Fontaine. His critical precepts are embodied in L'Art poétique (1674), a verse treatise; Le Lutrin (1683), a mock epic; 12 Satires (1st collected ed. 1716) and 12 Épîtres (1st collected ed. 1701), after Horace; and Les Héros de roman (1688), a dialogue in literary criticism. Revered in the 18th cent. as a literary lawgiver, he was later detested by the romantics. Boileau's poetic reputation rests on his satires, especially Le Lutrin, on the clerical world; Satires III and VI, on life in Paris; and Satire X, on women. He was a zealous polemicist, notably in quarrels with Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin and Perrault.

Bibliography

See edition of Les Héros de roman by T. F. Crane (1902); study by G. Pocock (1980).

Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas (1636–1711), French satirist, poet and poetic theoretician. Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was the fifteenth child of a Parisian government scribe and the younger brother of Gilles Boileau (1631–1669), also a poet (the family possession of Despréaux was often added to Nicolas's name to distinguish him from Gilles). Destined for either the law or the church, he found his talent lay in writing verse mocking societal ills and the popular writers of the time. The publication of the Satires in 1666 established his literary reputation, and his acceptance in the circle of President Lamoignon, the leader of the Parisian Parlement, gave him proper social status. He recognized early the talents of newer writers, such as Molière (1622–1673), Jean Baptiste Racine (1639–1699), and Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), who became his friends. As was typical in his age, he dismissed authors from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Wishing not only to follow Horatian poetic theory but to become the French Horace, he turned to writing poetic epistles and a verse L'art poétique (Art of poetry), which were published in 1674. In the same volume of collected works were a six-canto, mock-heroic poem "The Lectern" and a prose translation into French of the "Treatise on the Sublime" by the Greek theoretician Longinus (which some claimed was made by his brother Gilles, who had died in 1669). Apart from a few satires and epistles written later in his life, his literary production was limited to the 1660s and 1670s.

In 1677 Boileau and Racine became historiographers to Louis XIV. This was more an honorary title than a writing task, but both accompanied the king on some military campaigns. Elected to the French Academy in 1684, Boileau championed the ancients' cause in opposition to Charles Perrault (1628–1703). In the final decade of his life, having survived most of his fellow classical authors, he refined the exaggerated image of himself, which lasted for two centuries, as the Regent of Parnassus, whose rules defined good literary taste and maintained the aesthetic movement of French classicism.

His most popular and influential satires describe scenes from contemporary life (III, "The Ridiculous Meal" and VI, "The Obstacles of Paris") or literary critiques (II, "To Molière"; VII, "The Satiric Genre"; and IX, "To My Wit") which combine subjects and approaches from Horace (65–8 B.C.E.), Juvenal (c. 60–140 C.E.), and Mathurin Régnier (1573–1613). First read aloud in cabarets and literary gatherings, with different satiric targets substituted to fit the moment, Boileau's satires display oral techniques with a striking opening, rapid narration of events, and variety of verbal techniques to keep the crowd listening and laughing. With a bit of reported conversation and picturesque detail, the scene comes alive. His subject matter is bourgeois, whether people, places or concepts; he mocks baroque excess, exaggerated gallantry, and precious expression, but not the aristocracy. The epistles, which complement the satires by their moral and didactic intent of praising laudable people and actions, were not nearly as popular. Of interest, however, and concisely expressed, is "Epistle VII, To Racine."

In his masterpiece, The Art of Poetry, Boileau distinguishes himself not by the theoretical argument of the content, but by the witty, succinct phrases that summarize concepts examined previously by others. Added to this are several satiric passages that ridicule those authors whose bad taste or poor judgment led them to stray from the ideals of order, simplicity, and reason. In the first of four cantos, general principles of versification and clarity of expression are developed, and the useful service a poet's honest friend and critic can provide are described. The second canto provides the guidelines for the lesser genres, such as ode, elegy, satire, and sonnet. The third canto presents rules for writing the major poetic genres: tragedy, epic, and comedy. The well-known classical principle of the three dramatic unities (time, place, and action) is stated in a memorable couplet. The final canto is general in scope, moving from satire of Perrault to praise for the king, who encourages poetry and civilized discourse.

In one of his last works, "Satire XII, On the Love of God" (1698), Boileau reveals a preference for the simplicity and rigor of Jansenism as he chastises the ambiguities and subtleties cherished by the Jesuits. In both this world and the next, he sought the order and harmony obtained by an adherence to doctrine.

Revered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries only to be reviled in the twentieth, Boileau's influence and importance have more recently been placed between these two extremes, in a classical "just middle" that recognizes the technical skill of his poetic ability and the role of the Art of Poetry as a commentary on, not a cause of, French classicism.

Bibliography

Brody, Jules. Boileau and Longinus. Geneva, 1958.

Corum, Robert, Jr. Reading Boileau: An Integrative Study of the Early Satires. West Lafayette, Ind. 1998.

Pocock, Gordon. Boileau and the Nature of Neo-Classicism. Cambridge, U.K., 1980.

White, Julian Eugene, Jr. Nicolas Boileau. New York, 1969.

Wood, Allen. Literary Satire and Theory: A Study of Horace, Boileau and Pope. New York, 1985.

—ALLEN G. WOOD