Noël you fail

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Noël du Fail (* around 1520 in Saint-Erblon , Département Ille-et-Vilaine , † July 7, 1591 in Rennes ) was a French writer of the Renaissance . He is considered the Breton Rabelais .

life and work

Noël du Fail was the youngest son of a noble Breton family. He grew up in Letard Castle in Saint-Erblon. He went to school in Vern-sur-Seiche . From 1540 he studied law at various French universities. In 1544 he hired himself as a soldier and took part in the battle of Ceresole south of Turin . Then he finished his studies. In 1548 he returned to Rennes, married cheaply and pursued a legal career at Parliament . He owned the La Hérissaye farm near Pleumeleuc .

Du Fail is known as the author of three books. In 1547 he published the Propos rustiques ("Rural Conversations") with Jean de Tournes in Lyon , a defense of rural life, which took themes from Antonio de Guevara's Menosprecio de corte y alabanza de aldea (contempt for the court and praise of the village) and presented them and the language of the peasants was classified as "realistic".

The documentary character of Du Fail's prose is even more pronounced in Les Baliverneries (= talk) ou Contes nouveaux d'Eutrapel (Estienne Groulleau, Paris 1548), where Du Fail staged people of his own class.

37 years later, Les Contes et Discours d'Eutrapel appeared in Rennes in 1585 as a motley collection of very different anecdotes, satires and moral considerations in the manner of Montaigne , but always realistically situated in Breton rural and professional life. He processed numerous sources such as the Silva de varia lección by Pedro Mexía and is in turn the forerunner of the picaresque novel .

In 2011 the Association of Friends of Noëls du Fail ( L'association des Amis de Noël du Fail ), which maintains a website, was founded.

Literature (selection)

  • Marie-Claire Bichard-Thomine: Noël Du Fail conteur . Champion, Paris / Geneva 2001.
  • Valerio Cordiner: Quod facit ad rem. You fail e il discorso copies nel Cinquecento francese . Vecchiarelli, Manziana 2008.
  • Richard Förster: The so-called facetious works of Noe͏̈ls du Fail. A contribution to the knowledge of the French essay and swan literature of the 16th century . H. John's printing press, Halle 1912.
  • Kathleen Loysen: Conversations and storytelling in fifteenth and sixteenth century French nouvelles . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2004.
  • Edith Taddei: La noblesse provinciale du XVIe siècle à travers "Les propos rustiques" de Noël du Fail, "Le printemps" de Jacques Yver et "Les nouvelles histoires tant tragiques que comiques" de Vérité Habanc , Thèse Paris 3, 1992 (supervised by Madeleine Lazard).

Manual and lexicon information

  • Eduard von Jan , French literary history in basics , Quelle & Meyer: Leipzig 1937, 5th edition. Quelle & Meyer, Heidelberg 1962, p. 68.
  • Frank Lestringant, "Noël du Fail", in: Dictionnaire des écrivains de langue française , ed. by Jean-Pierre Beaumarchais, Daniel Couty and Alain Rey, Paris, Larousse, 2001, pp. 553–554.
  • Henri Weber, "La Renaissance", in: Manuel d'Histoire littérarire de la France , ed. by Pierre Abraham and Roland Desné. Tome 1. Des origines à 1600 , pp. 274–310 (here: pp. 304–310).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME You fail, Noël
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fail, Noël you
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Renaissance writer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1520
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Erblon , Ille-et-Vilaine department
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1591
Place of death Rennes