François-Augustin Paradis de Moncrif

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François-Augustin Paradis de Moncrif (* 1687 in Paris ; † November 12, 1770 ibid) was a French scholar, author and member of the Académie française .

life and work

Career

Moncrif's late father, Paradis, was a lawyer and royal secretary. His mother came from the Scottish Moncreiff family and as a widow took the French name Moncrif. Her son was well brought up, showed mental and physical abilities, was a consummate partner and, moreover, a fencing master. Through the mediation of the Abbé Augustin Nadal (1659–1741), he became the irreplaceable amusement organizer of Louis Duke of Aumont (1667–1723), with whom he went to London for a year. After 1715 he worked in the same role for René Louis d'Argenson as his secretary, and later for Louis de Bourbon, comte de Clermont , to whom he was also indispensable. When he was but because of a misunderstanding of Scripture in disgrace in 1738, it tied the Duchess of Luynes, Marie Brulart de La Borde (1684 to 1763), characterized in a court life that he, thanks to her, official lecturer of Queen Marie Leszczyńska was . At an advanced age, he became involved with the playwright Claire-Marie Mazarelli de Saint-Chamond (1731–1804). He died at the age of 83.

Academician and Author

Moncrif was admitted to the Académie française (seat no. 35) in 1733 and to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1747 . The election to the Académie française was unanimous under pressure from the Duke of Clermont, but gave rise to criticism as Marivaux was also a candidate.

Moncrif wrote poetry ( anacreontic which influenced Gleim ), prose and numerous plays. His best-known work is the learned satire Les chats (The Cats). The small cultural history of the house cat since the Egyptians (illustrated by Charles-Antoine Coypel , etched by Count Caylus ) combines the conversational level of the "honnête homme" with extreme erudition and thus breaks through a barrier, because with the honnête homme the scholar was regarded as a pedant and specialist idiot . His "humorous hybrid" (Rees) caused a lot of trouble for Moncrif. She threatened to bar his career, so that he had to make a real repentance to get rid of the handicap.

Beyond the borders of French, his socio-ethical work The Art of Pleasing (La nécessité et les moyens de plaire) attracted the greatest attention, insofar as it was written twice in German (by Johann Georg Krünitz and Renatus Gotthelf Löbel ) as well as in English, Italian and Spanish has been translated and recently published again.

Works

Stage works (chronological)

Undated: Alcide et Omphale . Carité et Erostes . Grisette . Le Sylphe . 1719: La Fausse magie . 1722: L'Oracle de Delphes . 1730: L'Amant Cochemard . 1732: Les Abdérites . 1733: Compliment . 1733: L'Empire de l'amour . Ballet. 1741: Les Demi-dieux ou Linus . 1745: Zélindor, roi des sylphes . Ballet. 1747: Ismène . Pastoral herroïque. 1747: Persiflès . 1748: Le Coq-à-la-nax . 1748: Isis et Oziris . 1748: Almasis . Ballet. 1748: Les Surprises de l'amour . 1748: L'Opérateur chinois ou le Père respecté . 1750: Les Fragments (Linus, Almasis, Ismène) . 1751: Le Trophée . 1751: Les Fragments (Ismène, Titon et l'Aurore, Aeglé ). 1751: Les Génies tutélaires . 1753: La Coquette trompée . 1753: La Sibylle . Ballet. 1758: Les Fêtes d'Euterpe . 1758: Enée et Lavinie . Opera. 1758: Les Fêtes d'Euterpe . Opera ballet. 1765: Erosine . Pastoral herroïque. 1766: Les Fêtes lyriques . 1768: Les Ames réunies ou la métempsycose . 1768: La Reine de Circassie .

Prose and poetry

  • Les Aventures de Zeloïde et d'Amanzarifdine, contes indiens . 1715.
  • Les chats . 1727. Saint-Etienne 1997.
    • (English) Moncrif's cats . New York 1965.
    • (Italian) Storia dei gatti . Milan 2002.
  • Essais sur la nécessité et sur les moyens de plaire . 1738. Saint-Etienne 1998.
    • (German) Moncrif's art of pleasing . Kleybens Verlag, Frankfurt an der Oder 1752. (translated by Johann Georg Krünitz )
    • (German) About the need and means to please . Leipzig 1798. (translated by Renatus Gotthelf Löbel )
    • (English) Art of pleasing. An essay on the necessity and the means of pleasing . New York 1812.
    • (Italian) L'arte di piacere . Milan 2009.
    • (Spanish) El arte de agradar . Madrid 2018.
  • Les Ames rivales . Roman, 1738
  • Œuvres mêlées . 1743.
  • Poésies chrétiennes composées par ordre de la Reine . 1747.

literature

  • Valentina Denzel: La galanterie des Contes indiens (1715) de François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif. A route between catholicisme et philosophie des Lumières . In: Les lumières catholiques et le roman français . Ed. Isabelle Tremblay. Liverpool 2018.
  • Claude Jamain: Le concert extravagant. Une expérience de la modernité chez Bordelon et Moncrif . In: Topographie du plaisir sous la Régence offerte à Maurice Barthélemy . Brussels 1998, pp. 77-92.
  • Jean Le Rond d'Alembert: Eloge de Moncrif . In: Same, œuvres . Vol. 3. Paris 1821, pp. 659-669.
  • Patrick Neiertz: Lumières obliques. Ironie et dialogues au XVIIIe siècle . Champion, Paris 2012, pp. 174-182.
  • Joachim Rees: The culture of the amateur . Weimar 2006, pp. 253-254. (Analysis of Histoire des Chats )
  • Edward Pease Shaw: The Case of the Abbé de Moncrif. An episode in the French Society of the Eighteenth Century . Bookman Associates, New York 1953. LLC, 2011.
  • Edward Pease Shaw: François-Augustin Paradis de Moncrif, 1687-1770 . Bookman Associates, New York 1958.
  • Augustin Thierry: Trois amuseurs d'autrefois. Paradis de Moncrif, Carmontelle, Charles Collé . Plon-Nourrit et cie, Paris 1924. [1]
  • Barbara Zaehle: Knigges dealing with people and its predecessors. A contribution to the history of social ethics . Winter, Heidelberg 1933.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Moncrif, François-Augustin Paradis de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French scholar, author and member of the Académie française
DATE OF BIRTH 1687
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1770
Place of death Paris