Charles de Brosses
Charles de Brosses , Comte de Tournay, Baron de Montfalcon, Seigneur de Vezins et de Prevessin (born February 7, 1709 in Dijon , France , † May 7, 1777 in Paris ) was a French lawyer and philologist of the 18th century . As one of the encyclopedists , he wrote articles for the Encyclopédie .
Live and act
Charles de Brosses was a close friend of the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788), who wrote the Histoire naturelle , and a personal opponent of Voltaire who had prevented de Brosses' admission to the Académie Française in 1770. Since he opposed the absolute power of the French king, he was banished in 1744 and 1771.
De Brosses wrote numerous scientific treatises on the history of antiquity , philology and linguistics , which were mainly used by Denis Diderot and Jean Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert for the Encyclopédie . The term " Polynesia " can be traced back to de Brosses , which he first used in 1756 to refer to all the islands in the Pacific.
He also introduced the concept of fetishism with his Du culte des dieux fétiches published in 1760, translated by Christian Brandanus Hermann Pistorius under the title About the service of the fetichi gods or comparison of the ancient religion of Egypt with today's religion of Nigritia .
From 1741 he was President of the Parliament in Dijon and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (from 1746) in Paris and the Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres (from 1761) in Dijon.
Works (selection)
- Lettres sur Herculanum (1750), the first published work on the subject
- Histoire des navigations aux terres australes (1756)
- Du culte des dieux fétiches (1760)
- Formation mécanique des langues (1765), an important work for etymologists
- l'Histoire du IVe siècle de la République romaine (1777), a French translation of Sallust's Historia , partially restored from ancient fragments and illustrated with topographical maps and archaeological sites.
- L'Italie il ya cent ans, ou Lettres écrites d'Italie à quelques amis en 1739 et 1740 (1795 and 1836). De Brosses is best known in France for these posthumously published letters from Italy to friends in Dijon. Pushkin and Stendhal ,among others,greatly appreciated this publication.
- Brosses, Charles de: Confidential letters from Italy to his friends in Dijon 1739-40. Volume 1. Munich: G. Müller 1918 Translated by Werner Schwartzkopff
- Brosses, Charles de: Confidential letters from Italy to his friends in Dijon 1739-40. Volume 2. Munich: G. Müller 1922 Translated by Maja & Werner Schwartzkopff
Web links
- Literature by and about Charles de Brosses in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frank A. Kafker: Notices sur les auteurs of dix-sept volumes de "discours" de l'Encyclopédie . In: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie . tape 7 , no. 7 , 1989, pp. 133 ( online ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Brosses, Charles de |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Charles Debrosses |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 7, 1709 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dijon , France |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 7, 1777 |
| Place of death | Paris |