|
|
|
|
|
Franois Hdelin, Abb D'aubignacFranois Hdelin, abb d'Aubignac (August 4, 1604 - July 25, 1676), French author, was born at Paris. His father practised at the Paris bar, and his mother was a daughter of the great surgeon Ambroise Par. Francois Hdelin was educated for his father's profession, but, after practising some time at Nemours he abandoned law, took holy orders, amd was appointed tutor to one of Richelieu's nephews, the duc de Fronsac. This patronage secured for him the abbey Aubignac and of Mainac. The death of the duc de Fronsac 1646 put an end to hopes of further preferment, and the abb d'Aubignac retired to Nemours, occupying himself with literature till his death. He took an energetic share in the literary controversies of his time. Against Gilles Mnage he wrote a Trence justifi (1656); he laid claim having originated the idea of the Carte de tendre of Mlle de Scudry's Clli; and after being a professed admirer of Corneille turned against him because he had neglected to mention the abb in his Discours sur le pome dramatique. He was the author four tragedies: La Cyminde (1642), La Pucelle d'Orlans (1642), Znobie (1647) and Le Martyre de Sainte Catherine (1650). Znobie was written with the intention of affording a model in which the strict rules of the drama, as understood by the theorists, were served. In the choice of subjects for his plays, he seems to have been guided by a desire to illustrate the various kinds of tragedy--patriotic, antique and religious. The dramatic authors whom he was in the habit of criticizing were not slow to take advantage of the opportunity for retaliation offered by the production of these mediocre plays. It is as a theorist that Aubignac still arrests attention. It has been proved that to Jean Chapelain belongs the credit of having been the first to play so large a part in the history of the French stage; but the laws of dramatic method and construction generally were codified by d'Aubignac in his Pratique du thtre. The book was only published in 1657, but had been begun at the desire of Richelieu as early as 1640. His Conjectures acadmiques ou dissertation sur l'Iliade d'Homre, which was not published until nearly forty years after his death, threw doubts on the existence of Homer, and anticipated in some sense the conclusions of Friedrich August Wolf in his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795). The contents of the Pratique du thtre are summarized by Ferdinand Brunetire in his notice of Aubignac in the Grande Encyclopdie. See also G Saintsbury, Hist. of Criticism, bk v., and Hippolyte Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens et modernes (1859). Hdelin, Franois, abb d'Aubignac d'Aubignac, Franois Hdelin, abb d'Aubignac, Franois Hdelin, abb
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|