Pierre Du Ryer

Pierre Du Ryer (* approx. 1600 in Paris ; † 1658 ibid) was a French pre-classical playwright and translator, member of the Académie française .

life and work

Life

Pierre Du Ryer was the son of the poet Isaac Du Ryer (1568–1634). His year of birth is controversial and is believed to be between 1600 and 1606. It is believed that he was a trained lawyer. In 1621 he took over the post of royal secretary from his father. From 1634 to 1640 he was in the service of the Duke of Vendôme , but did not go into English exile with him. Since he had been writing for the stage since 1628 and had been translating from Latin since 1634, he decided in 1640 to earn his living from it in the future, which was not possible without restrictions. Around 1650, contemporaries describe him as living modestly with his family in a village near Paris and tirelessly translating. After all, he was so successful that he was elected to the Académie française (seat No. 9) in 1646 , where he triumphed over rival Pierre Corneille . In his third marriage, he returned to Paris and died there at the age of under 60.

Playwright and translator. reception

As a playwright, especially of tragedies and tragicomedies, he gained a firm place in French literary history in the second row, where he is often mentioned alongside Jean de Rotrou , Jean Mairet and other representatives of the French pre-classical period. As a translator for thousands of pages, he was completely oriented towards the principle of the beautiful target text, with a deliberate neglect of originality and accuracy.

More recent research on Du Ryer began in 1905 and 1912 with books by a German (Kurt Philipp, * 1879) and an American Romanist ( Henry Carrington Lancaster ). In 1988 James F. Gaines (* 1949, also US American) provided a political interpretation of his work. In 2001, a French anthology tried to present a synopsis of his translation and his theatrical work. The Petit Larousse dedicates a short entry to him in 2020.

Works

theatre

tragedies

• Lucrece 1637
• Alcionée 1637
• Saül 1639/1640
• Esther 1642
• Scévole 1644
• Themistocle 1646

Tragic comedies

• Aretaphile 1628
• Clitophon 1628
• Argenis et Polyarque . Première Journée 1630
• Nuisance . Seconde Journée 1629
• Lisandre et Caliste 1630
• Alcimedon 1632/1633
• Cleomedon (Rossyleon) 1634
• Clarigène 1637/1638
• Bérénice 1644
• Nitocris 1648
• Dynamis 1649
• Anaxandre 1653

Further theater works

• (Shepherd's game) Amarillis 1631/1633
• (Comedy) Les Vendanges de Suresne 1633

Translated authors (chronological)

• 1634: Salvian of Marseille
• 1638–1657: Cicero (12 vols.)
• 1640: Isocrates
• 1644–1659: Famiano Strada (1572–1649)
• 1645: António of Crato
• 1645: Herodotus (3 vol.)
• 1647: Johannes Freinsheim
• 1647-1651: Seneca
• 1650: Sulpicius Severus
• 1653: Livius (2 vols.)
• 1655: Polybios (3 vols.)
• 1655: Ovid (2 vols.)
• 1658: Jacques-Auguste de Thou (3 vols.)

literature

• Kurt Philipp: Pierre Du Ryer's life and dramatic works . Zwickau 1905.
• Henry Carrington Lancaster: Pierre Du Ryer, dramatist . Carnegie, Washington DC 1912.
• James F. Gaines: Pierre DuRyer and his tragedies. From envy to liberation . Droz, Geneva 1988.
• Dominique Moncond'huy (Ed.): Pierre Du Ryer, dramaturge et traducteur Littératures classiques 42, 2001.

Web links

• Information on Pierre Du Ryer in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
• Literature by and about Pierre Du Ryer in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)