Philippe Néricault Destouches
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Philippe Néricault Destouches (born April 9, 1680 in Tours , † July 4, 1754 in Fortoiseau near Melun ) was a French comedy poet .
Life and work
Little is known about the origins and youth of Destouches, except that he came from a small background but received a decent education. Maybe as a young man he was a soldier, maybe an actor. Around 1705 he got in Paris after the Roger Brulart de Sillery, marquis de Puysieux (1640-1719), the French chief diplomat (from 1697 on) for the Swiss cantons, and entered his service. He made social and literary contacts through him, including the established author Nicolas Boileau , who encouraged him.
In 1710 he accompanied Puysieulx to Switzerland , where he performed his first piece, Le Curieux impertinent (the insolent inquisitive). This was taken over by the Paris Comédie-Française , and also the following pieces, L'Ingrat (the ungrateful, 1712), L'Irrésolu (the undecided, 1713), Le Médisant (the slanderer, 1715) or Le Jaloux (the jealous one , 1716) came out there successfully.
In the meantime Destouches had met the Abbé and soon Cardinal Guillaume Dubois , who from 1715 acted first as Foreign Minister and later as First Minister under the regent of France, Philip of Orléans . He was taken by him to London for diplomatic negotiations in 1717 , where he remained as secretary of the embassy, tried his hand at various missions and also married an Englishwoman.
When he returned from England in 1723, he was rewarded with the noble office of “royal door guard” (Garde de la porte du Roi) and admission to the Académie française ( Fauteuil 6 ). In 1725 he quit his diplomatic service, bought the country estate of Fortoiseau near Melun , 40 km southeast of Paris, and turned back to literature. His next piece, Le Philosophe marié ou le Mari honteux de l'être (the married philosopher or the husband ashamed of his marriage, 1727) was an instant success.
Destouches reached his peak as an author with Le Glorieux (the snooty, 1732), a play about an impoverished but conceited nobleman who ultimately converts to more modesty and has a rich bourgeois daughter. The piece saw 30 performances in a row and was often played afterwards.
The specialty of the comedies by Destouches, which anticipate many elements of the “drame bourgeois” ( bourgeois tragedy ), is the portrayal of disturbing, but not too bad, vices and weaknesses, which in the end mostly turn out to be curable. To today's readers, the actions of the pieces appear morally correct, the characters too undifferentiated and too flat psychologically.
In his later years, Destouches acquired the office of royal governor of the city of Melun, one of the many honorary posts without specific jurisdiction awarded by the ancien régime .
Several of his pieces were only performed posthumously.
Works (selection)
- Le Curieux impertinent (1710)
- L'Ingrat (1712)
- L'Irrésolu (1713)
- Le Médisant (1715)
- Le Jaloux (1716)
- Le Philosophe Maré (1727)
- Le Glorieux (1732)
- Le Dissipateur (The Prodigal, 1736)
- La Fausse Agnès (The false A., 1736)
- L'Ambitieux et l'indiscrète (The Ambitious and the Indiscreet, 1737)
- L'Amour usé (The worn out love, 1741)
- Les Amours de Ragonde (The love of R., 1742)
Web links
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
- Studies on the comedies of Philippe Néricault Destouches
- "The triple marriage" Text by Project Gutenberg
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Destouches, Philippe Néricault |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French comedy poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 9, 1680 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tours |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th July 1754 |
| Place of death | at Melun |