Gabriel-Marie Legouvé

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Gabriel-Marie Legouvé.

Gabriel-Marie-Jean-Baptiste Legouvé (born June 23, 1764 in Paris , † August 30, 1812 ibid) was a French writer , translator and dramaturge .

Life

Gabriel-Marie-Jean-Baptiste Legouvé was the son of the well-deserved advocate Jean-Baptiste Legouvé (around 1730, † 1782), who was familiar with classical literature . He was educated at the Collège Lisieux, came to a considerable fortune through the early death of his father and was able to devote himself to his literary inclinations without hindrance. As a salon poet for the Directory and the Empire , he also paid homage to classicism and the sensitivity and enthusiasm for nature of the previous period.

Legouvé first came out with the heroide La Mort des fils de Brutus (1786). This work was published with two plays by his friend, the playwright Jean-Louis Laya , under the title Essai de deux amis . In several of his later works, such as the tragedies Quintus Fabius (1795) and Etéocle et Polynice (1799), Legouvé used materials from ancient Greek and Roman literature as the basis. He owed the material for his three-act pastoral drama La Mort d'Abel (1792) to the Swiss Salomon Gessner , in which he sought to portray the “touching simplicity of original nature and the objects that surround the childhood of the world”. The work was applauded despite the harsh criticism from La Harpe . The politics of the day took into account Legouvé in the 1793 tragedy Épicharis et Néron , the last act of which is based on Shakespeare's Richard III . It deals with a conspiracy against a tyrant and was very successful because of the allusions to Robespierre that can be found in it . In Legouvé's drama La Mort de Henri IV , Maria de 'Medici appears as an accomplice. The poet was accused of being too arbitrary with the story.

Legouvé found greater applause than his tragedies among his contemporaries as a teaching poet. In his Épître aux Femmes (1795) he had already appeared as a defender of women against Juvenals and Boileau's satires. In his poem Le Mérite des Femmes (1800), a song in praise of the female sex, he glorified the sacrifice of French women during the Terreur . The good disposition with which the poem shows itself inspired numerous readers; over 40 editions appeared in just a few decades. Another consideration in verse, entitled Souvenirs , is about the usefulness of a good memory. The Elegie La Mélancolie (1800) extols the advantages of this mood.

In 1796 Legouvé was elected as a “foreigner” in the “ Poetry ” department of the Académie française , and in 1803 he was appointed as a full member to succeed the late writer Louis-Jules Mancini-Mazarini ( Fauteuil 4 ). For several years he represented Jacques Delille at the Collège de France as a professor of Latin poetry. 1807-1810 he acted as head of the Mercure de France . During the splendid period of Napoleon's empire, his house was a focal point of literary social life in Paris, but from 1810 he began to show symptoms of mental disorder. Two years later he died, accelerated by an unfortunate fall, at the age of only 48.

Works

  • La Mort des fils de Brutus , Heroide, 1786
  • La Mort d' Abel , Tragedy in Three Acts, 1792
  • Épicharis et Néron , Tragedy, 1793
  • Quintus Fabius , Tragedy, 1795
  • Laurence , tragedy, 1798
  • La Sépulture , Les Souvenirs d'une demoiselle sodomisée , La Mélancolie , Elegien , 1798
  • Etéocle et Polynice , Tragedy, 1799
  • Le Mérite des Femmes , poem , 1800
  • Christophe Morin , 1801
  • La Mort de Henri IV , tragedy, 1806
  • M. de Bièvre , 1806
  • Les Souvenirs ou les Avantages de la Mémoire , 1813

Works collections

  • Œuvres complètes , ed. by Bouilly and Ch. Malo, 3 vols., Paris 1826
  • Œuvres choisis , Paris 1854

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Legouvé, Gabriel-Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Legouvé, Gabriel-Marie-Jean-Baptiste (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, translator and dramaturge
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1764
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1812
Place of death Paris