Théophile Gautier | |
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Théophile Gautier photographed by Nadar
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Born | Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier 30 August 1811 Tarbes, France |
Died | 23 October 1872 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France |
(aged 61)
Resting place | Cimetière de Montmartre |
Occupation | Writer, poet, painter, art critic |
Literary movement | Parnassianism, Romanticism |
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier (French: [pjɛʁ ʒyl teofil ɡotje]; 30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as disparate as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Pound, Eliot, James, Proust and Wilde.
Gautier was born on 30 August 1811 in Tarbes, capital of Hautes-Pyrénées département (southwestern France). His father was Pierre Gautier, a fairly cultured minor government official, and his mother was Antoinette-Adelaïde Concarde. The family moved to Paris in 1814, taking up residence in the ancient Marais district.
Gautier's education commenced at the prestigious Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris (fellow alumni include Voltaire, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and the Marquis de Sade), which he attended for three months before being brought home due to illness. Although he completed the remainder of his education at Collège Charlemagne (alumni include Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve), Gautier's most significant instruction came from his father, who prompted him to become a Latin scholar by age eighteen.