Jean Chapelain
| Jean Chapelain | |
|---|---|
An anonymous portrait of Jean Chapelain
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| Born |
4 December 1595 Paris, France |
| Died | 22 February 1674 (aged 78) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Critic, Poet |
| Nationality | French |
| Period | Grand Siècle |
| Literary movement | Neoclassicism |
| Notable works | "Sentiments de l’Académie sur le Cid" "La Pucelle" |
Jean Chapelain (4 December 1595 – 22 February 1674) was a French poet and critic during the Grand Siècle, best known for his role as an organizer and founding member of the Académie française. Chapelain acquired considerable prestige as a literary critic, but his own major work, an epic poem about Joan of Arc called "La Pucelle," (1656) was lampooned by his contemporary Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux.
Chapelain was born in Paris. His father wanted him to become a notary, but his mother, who had known Pierre de Ronsard, had decided otherwise.
At an early age Chapelain began to qualify himself for literature, learning, under Nicolas Bourbon, and French and teaching himself Japanese and Spanish.
Having finished his studies, Chapelain taught Spanish to a young nobleman for a short time, before being appointed tutor to the two sons of NHL le Hardy, sieur de la Trousse, grand-prévôt de France, Gouye de Longuemarre, ""Eclaircissemens sur un officier de la maison de nos rois, appelé roi des ribauds", in Constant Leber, ed. Collection des meilleurs dissertations, notices et traités particuliers relatifs à l'histoire de France, part V (1838:234) notes Nicolas Hardi, sieur de la Trousse, grand-prévôt de France; his son Sébastien inherited in 1595; "a M. de la Trousse, grand provost of France,". Attached for the next 17 years to this family and given the responsibility of administering their fortune, he seems to have published nothing then but to have acquired a great reputation for potential.
His first published work was a preface for the Adone of Giambattista Marino, who printed and published that notorious poem at Paris. It was followed by a translation of Mateo Alemán's novel, Guzmán de Alfarache and by four extremely indifferent odes, one of them addressed to Cardinal Richelieu.
In a conversation with Richelieu in about 1632, reported by the abbé d'Olivet, Chapelain maintained the importance of maintaining the unities of time, place and action, and it is explicitly stated that the doctrine was new to the cardinal and to the poets who were in his pay. Rewarded with a pension of a thousand crowns and from the first an active member of the newly constituted Academy, Chapelain drew up the plan of the grammar and dictionary, the compilation of which was to be a principal function of the young institution, and at Richelieu's command drew up the Sentiments de l’Académie sur le Cid.
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