Élie Catherine Fréron
Élie Catherine Fréron (born January 20, 1718 in Quimper / Bretagne ; † March 10, 1776 in Montrouge near Paris) was a French writer and publicist, whose name is well known thanks to his feuds with Voltaire .
Life and work
Fréron was the 15th child of a goldsmith and received his education from the Jesuits , first in his hometown and then in Paris at the Collège Louis-le-Grand . In 1737 he became a novice in the Jesuit order and briefly worked as a teacher in Louis-le-Grand.
In 1739, at the end of his novitiate, he decided to live as a freelance writer and worked for the anti-Enlightenment-oriented literary magazine Observations sur les écrits modern des Abbé Desfontaines , who had already been his teacher at Louis-le-Grand. When the observations were stopped in 1745 when the Abbé died, Fréron immediately published his own magazine, Lettres de Mme la comtesse de *** sur quelques écrits modern . Here he made a name for himself as an astute, fearless and pointed-tongued critic of established authors, especially those of the Enlightenment. As early as 1746 he had to deal with the state for the first time when at the instigation of the royal mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour , his magazine was banned and he was temporarily imprisoned in Vincennes .
In 1748 Fréron became secretary and employee of the literary amateur Duc d'Estouteville, with whom he wrote a partial transmission of Giambattista Marino's Adone , published in 1623 .
In 1749 he founded a new magazine, the Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps , which was banned the following year. In 1752 he reactivated it and renamed it in 1754 to L'Année littéraire . This magazine, which publishes an issue every 10 days, then became his life's work, which he carried out, also with great economic success, until his death. The tendency of the Année was again anti-enlightenment; aesthetically, it was committed to the ideals of the classical period. It was valued and widely read in conservative-Catholic and royalist-absolutist circles and functioned as a central organ of the opponents of the Enlightenment.
Occasionally, Fréron also worked as a historian. He wrote a Histoire de Marie Stuart (together with the Abbé de Marsy, 1742) and a Histoire de l'Empire d'Allemagne (8 vols., 1771).
After he had initially been an admirer of Voltaire, Fréron made him an enemy at the time of the Observations with factual, polite but caustic criticisms who pursued him downright vengefully, in 1760/61 a hail of satires and epigrams descended on him and even presented him in his comedy L'Écossaise (1760) under the name Frélon as a disgusting gossip columnist (who was renamed "Wasp" in the first series of performances). The Geneva edition of his tragedy Tancrède of 1761 was preceded by a frontispiece depicting Élie Fréron (referred to by Voltaire Martin F.) as a donkey in front of a tree. Voltaire maliciously gave Fréron the first name Martin or Jean , as swear words could be constructed from the initials. The following malicious epigram of Voltaire became particularly well known:
- L'autre jour, au fond d'un vallon,
- Un serpent mordit Jean [sic] Fréron.
- Que croyez-vous qu'il arriva?
- Ce fut le serpent qui creva.
(The other day, at the bottom of a valley, a snake bit Jean Fréron. What do you think what happened? It was the snake that died.)
Fréron, who finally fell on the losing side due to the victory of the Enlightenment in literary and intellectual history, had a difficult time during his lifetime, although he had powerful patrons, including the French Queen Marie Leszczyńska and her father Stanislaus I. Leszczyński . Again and again his opponents, the “philosophes” united around the Encyclopédie , managed to have his magazine banned. He was even briefly detained twice. His friends also saw his sudden death from a gout attack caused by anger over a renewed ban on the magazine. His opponents, however, explained his known tendency to drink and gluttony as the cause.
Today, Fréron is mostly viewed from the perspective of Voltaire as a malicious polemicist and rarely as the talented critic and pamphleteer he was. As a guide and promoter of young authors of the time such as Gilbert , Clément and Sabatier de Castres , he was a key figure in the French Counter-Enlightenment (Contre-Lumières) with a lasting effect well into the 19th century.
But also Denis Diderot , the co-editor of the Encyclopédie , playwright and philosopher, attacked Fréron with sometimes dishonest means, so he accused him of plagiarism of some of his plays and constructed "evidence" on this.
His son Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron , born in 1754, took over the publication of the Année littéraire after the death of his father and continued it until 1791 when, as a supporter of the revolution and later a member of the mountain party, he published the Orateur du Peuple .
Works
- Ad Bellonam, ode, authore Elia Fréron , EA apud Joannem Poisson, no place, 1737, 8 °, 4 p.
- Histoire de Marie Stuart (with the Abbé de Marsy), EA without printer, London (Paris), 1742, 2 vols. (2), 600; (2), 215, (1) pp.
- Lettre sur l'oraison funèbre du Cardinal Fleury du Père de Neuville, Jésuite , EA without printer, without location, without date, around 1743, 4 °, 16 pp.
- Lettre de l'auteur de l'ode sur les conquestes du roy, à un ami , EA without printer, without location, around 1744
- Acajou et Zirphile, conte , EA Minutie, no place, 1744, 8 °, 108 pp.
- Réponse du Public à l'auteur d'Acajou , EA Minutie, no place, 1744, 36 pp.
- Les conquêtes du roi, ode , EA Prault fils, Paris 1744.
- La renownedée, ode par l'abbé Fréron , EA Prault fils, Paris, 1744, 8 °, 10, (2) p.
- Plan et statuts d'une nouvelle académie: avec des éclaircissemens , EA without printer, without location, 1744, 4 °, 16 pp.
- Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy , 1745
- Les vrais plaisirs ou les Amours de Vénus et d'Adonis , partial transfer to Italian, 1748
- Suite des lettres sur la musique françoise en réponse à celle de Jean-Jacques Rousseau , (with Jean-Jacques Baudinet), EA without printer, Geneva, 1754, 8 °, 40 pp.
- Avertissement au sujet du nouvel ouvrage périodique intitulé l'Année littéraire, par M. Fréron des Académies d'Angers, de Montauban et de Nancy , EA Lambert, Panckoucke, Lacombe, Delalain, Le Jay, Amsterdam and Paris, (1754), 12 °, 12 p.
- Histoire de l'Empire d'Allemagne (1771, 8 vols.)
- Les deux matrones ou les infidélités démasquées. Ouvrage posthume de M. Fréron, enrichi de Notes curieuses et intéresantes avec figures , EA Au Temple de la Vérité, Paris, 1776 - 2 parts, 8 °, X-24 and 98 pp.
Editing and collaboration
- Lettres de Mme la comtesse de *** sur quelques écrits modern (magazine, 1746)
- Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps (magazine, with the Abbé de La Porte), EA Duchesne, Geneva, Nancy and Paris 1749–1750 and 1752–1754, 13 vols. In 12 °
- L'Année littéraire (magazine, 1754–1791, 292 vol.) Fréron was editor until 1776. The magazine was continued by Fréron's son Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron until 1791 .
Work edition
- Opuscules de M. F *** (selection of works), EA Arkstée & Merkus, Amsterdam, 1753, 3 vols. 12 ° (4), IV, 408; 420; (6), 431, (1) p.
bibliography
- Jean Balcou Fréron contre les Philosophes Librairie Droz, Geneva, 1975
- Jean Balcou, Sophie Barthélemy et André Cariou (eds.): Fréron, polémiste et critique d'art , Collection Interférences, 2001 ISBN 2-86847-528-0
- Yann Brekilien , Prestiges du Finistère , Editions France-Empire, 1969
- Charles Monselet , Fréron ou l'illustre critique , Pincebourde, Paris, 1864
- J. Trévédy, Fréron et sa famille d'après des documents authentiques & inédits rectifiant toutes les biographies , Saint-Brieuc, L. & R. Prud'homme, 1889
literature
- McMahon, DM: The Counter-Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France , Past & Present, 1998, 159 (1), pp. 77-112
- Robert Lancelot Myers: The dramatic theories of Elie Catherine Freron , Droz, Genève, 1962
Web links
- Works by and about Élie Catherine Fréron in the German Digital Library
- Ville de Quimper: Un Quimpérois célèbre et méconnu: Élie Fréron
- Gert Pinkernell, article "Fréron" in the names, titles and dates of French literature, T. 1 (main source of the above article)
Individual evidence
- ^ Robert Lancelot Myers: The dramatic theories of Elie Catherine Freron, Drroz, Genève, p. 39
- ^ Lepape, Pierre: Denis Diderot. A biography. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt a / M (1994), ISBN 3-593-35150-1 , p. 216
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fréron, Élie Catherine |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French writer and publicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 20, 1718 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Quimper |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 10, 1776 |
| Place of death | Montrouge |