Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d'Olivet

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Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d'Olivet (born April 1, 1682 in Salins-les-Bains , † October 8, 1768 in Paris ) was a French Roman Catholic clergyman, man of letters, grammarian, translator, lexicographer, Romanist and member of the Académie française .

life and work

Olivet's father was a councilor in the Parliament of Besançon . Olivet attended the Jesuit college in Salins. He entered the Society of Jesus and was sent to Reims to teach in 1700 . There he came into contact with the scholars Jean Mabillon and François de Maucroix (1619–1708). He went to Paris via Dijon, taught at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand (where he was Voltaire's valued teacher) and socialized with Nicolas Boileau . In 1713 he was sent by the order to Rome to take over from Joseph de Jouvancy (1643–1719), who had been working since 1699 to complete the history of the order. In view of the amount of work this meant and unwilling to sacrifice his previous Cicero studies for it, he resigned from the order. After he had previously called himself Thoulier (after his mother), he was now called Olivet and went down in French literary and linguistic history as the Abbé d'Olivet.

Boileau made him an admirer of Cicero and began to translate it again. After the first translations had appeared in 1721 (which were followed by numerous others), he became a member of the Académie française in 1723 (seat no. 31). He wrote (after Paul Pellisson ) the second part of the history of the academy (from 1652 to 1700), a verse theory admired by Voltaire and a (torso retained) French grammar. Half a century after Racine he examined details of his language, just as Malherbe had dealt with Desportes a century earlier . Since he found some things to criticize from the point of view of the present and that could appear unseemly, Pierre François Guyot Desfontaines believed that he had to defend Racine in his book Racine vengé (The avenged Racine). In addition, Olivet was the driving force behind the third edition of the Academy's dictionary, published in 1740. From 1740 to 1742 he published Cicero's works in 9 volumes. In 1746 he was able to welcome Voltaire as a new member of the academy. He died in 1768 at the age of 86. In Salins a street and a monument (bust) remind of him.

Works (selection)

author

  • Histoire de l'Académie françoise depuis 1652 jusqu'à 1700 . Jean-Baptiste Coignard fils, Paris 1729. Ed. Charles-Louis Livet . Paris 1858. Geneva 1989.
  • Traité de la prosodie françoise . Gandouin, Paris 1736, 1757, 1805, 1809, 1812, 1824. Geneva 1760.
  • Remarques de grammaire sur Racine . Gandouin, Paris 1738, 1766.
  • Essais sur la grammaire. Article premier. Des noms. Paris 1744.
  • Recueil d'opuscules littéraires . Amsterdam 1767.
  • Remarques on the French language . Babou, Paris 1767, 1771, 1783, 1793. Slatkine, Geneva 1968. ( Prosodie françoise , pp. 1–125. Essais de grammaire: Noms, Articles, Pronoms, Participes , pp. 126–217. Remarques sur Racine , pp. 219–336)

translator

  • Entretiens de Cicéron sur la nature des dieux . 3 vols. J. Estienne, Paris 1721.
  • Les Catilinaires de Cicéron, oraisons première, seconde, troisième et quatrième, en latin et en françois . A. Molin, Lyon 1726.
  • Oraisons de Démosthène et de Cicéron . J. Estienne, Paris 1727.
  • Tusculane de Cicéron sur le mépris de la mort . Gandouin, Paris 1732.
  • Pensées de Cicéron, traduites pour servir à l'éducation de la jeunesse . Coignard / Guérin, Paris 1644.

editor

  • Huetiana, ou Pensées diverses de M. Huet . J. Estienne, Paris 1722.
  • M. Tullii Ciceronis opera cum delectu commentariorum . 9 vols. Paris 1740–1742.

literature

  • Lettres de Pierre-Joseph Thoulier, abbé d'Olivet 1719–1745 . Edited by Christiane Lauvergnat-Gagnière and Henri Duranton. 2 vols. Université de Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne 1976.
  • Pierre François Guyot Desfontaines: Racine vengé. Examination of the remarques grammaticales de M. l'abbé d'Olivet, sur les Œuvres de Racine . Avignon 1739.
  • Emmanuel Bousson de Mairet: Éloge historique et littéraire de l'abbé d'Olivet . Paris 1839.
  • Max Claudet: Souvenirs sur l'abbé d'Olivet, de l'Académie française, 1682–1768 . Duvernois, Salins 1878.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Olivet, Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d '
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Olivet, Abbé d '; Thoulier, Pierre-Joseph; Pierre d'Olivet
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Roman Catholic clergyman, man of letters, grammarian, translator, lexicographer, Romanist and member of the Académie française
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1682
PLACE OF BIRTH Salins-les-Bains
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1768
Place of death Paris