Jean Donneau de Visé

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Jean Donneau de Visé (born December 3 or 4, 1638 in Paris , † July 8, 1710 in Paris) was a French writer and publicist, founder of the Mercure de France .

Life

Jean Donneau de Visé was the son of Antoine Donneau, an officer in the king's service, and Claude Gaboury. He was baptized on December 5, 1638 in the parish church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and lived in Paris all his life. His literary career began in 1662 with reviews of Pierre Corneille and Molière , whom he accused of profanity and moral licentiousness after the school of women was published . However, he reconciled himself with Molière, who in 1665 performed his first comedy La Mère coquette ou les Amants brouillés ("The flirtatious mother or the quarreled lovers") in the Palais Royal . From 1670 he wrote tragedies with surprising machine effects , which were successfully recorded. The pieces he wrote for the Théâtre Guénégaud together with Thomas Corneille after Molière's death : Circé (1675) and La Devineresse (“The Sorceress”, 1679) were true triumphs and brought the theater company high revenues. In addition to his stage works, he published the Nouvelles galantes et comiques (1669), a collection of short gallant novels. From 1672 he secured himself a permanent place in the Parisian literary scene as publisher of the Mercure galant , which initially appeared every three months until 1673 and after a break of several years from 1677 as a monthly. After a five-year waiting period, he was ennobled in 1673. In the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes he represented the party of the “moderns” for decades. He was able to take advantage of the success of his newspaper and in 1681 received a contract as an official journalist and royal historiographer . He was one of the richest contemporary writers in France, but after he had published a magnificent ten-volume edition of the memoirs on Louis XIV at his own expense from 1697 to 1703 , his financial circumstances deteriorated. In 1705 he asked the king to be saved from his financial predicament. However, he kept the management of the Mercure until May 1710, just before his death.

Donneau de Visé was married to Anne Picou, daughter of a painter and royal valet, for the first time since 1670. She died in 1681, after which the widower married Marie Catherine Le Hongre, daughter of a Parisian sculptor, in 1698. The couple had several children about whom nothing is known. Donneau de Visé went blind in 1706 and died on July 8, 1710 in the Louvre in Paris . Voltaire criticized his attacks against Racine and in the story L'Ingénu (1767) described his magazine as “the excrement of literature”.

Stage works

  • La Mère coquette ou les Amants brouillés (1665)
  • Les Maris infidèles (1673)
  • Les Amours de Vénus et d'Adonis (1685, with music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier )
  • Les Dames vengées, ou La Dupe de soi-même (1695)
  • L'Aventurier (1696)
  • Le Vieillard couru (1696)
  • La Devineresse (1679)
  • La Pierre Philosophale (1680, with music by Charpentier)
  • L'Usurier (1685)
With Thomas Corneille
  • Circé
  • L'Inconnu (1673, tragic comedy, with music by Charpentier)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean Donneau de Visé et la querelle de Sophonisbe

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Visé, Jean Donneau de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1638 or December 4, 1638
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1710
Place of death Paris