Prosper Jolyot Crébillon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Prosper Jolyot Crébillon

Prosper Jolyot Crébillon (actually Prosper Jolyot, sieur de Crais-Billon ; born January 13, 1674 in Dijon , † June 17, 1762 in Paris ) was a French author. In France around 1710 he was considered the greatest playwright of his generation.

Life and work

He was the son of Geneviève Ganiare (* approx. 1650) and Melchior Jolyot, Seigneur de Crébillon (approx. 1640–1707), a senior judicial clerk of the Chambre des comptes in Dijon. He owned the small country estate Crais-Billon near the city, the name of which he had appended to the actual family name in an aristocratic manner.

Crébillon (as he called himself later and as he is called in literary history ) began his schooling at the Jesuit college of Dijon, collège de Jésuites des Godrans , and finished it at the Collège Mazarin in Paris. He then completed a law degree in Paris and was admitted to the bar. However, he preferred to work as a public prosecutor's secretary, and as a young man enjoyed life in the vicinity of the “Basoche”, the association of the employees of the high Parisian courts.

After his superior noticed his passion for the theater and encouraged him to write, Crébillon tried in 1703 as the author of the tragedy La Mort des enfants de Brutus , which was not accepted for performance. His breakthrough in 1705 was Idoménée , followed by several other tragedies: Atrée et Thyeste ( 1707 ), Électre (1708) and Rhadamiste et Zénobie (1711, probably his best piece).

In 1707 he married Marie-Charlotte Péaget (approx. 1690–1711), daughter of a Parisian pharmacist on Place Maubert , who shortly thereafter gave birth to a son: the later writer Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon .

A special characteristic of Crébillon were the gruesome effects on the stage. So he almost lets a father drink the blood of his son who was murdered by his brother, he lets another character kill his own son first and then himself. With this he deliberately exceeded the limits of the "bienséance" (modesty) of the French classical music , which in particular Corneille and Racine had set, as their successors he was considered for a while.

The tragedies of Xerxès (1714) and Sémiramis (1717) were failures. Crébillon withdrew from the theater. Financial difficulties (his father had left debts instead of the inheritance he had hoped for) and his early widowhood added to his stress.

Only in 1726 did he manage to return with the piece Pyrrhus . Its success let him regain a foothold in Parisian literary life. In 1731 he was accepted into the Académie française . In 1733, as a favorite of the theater-loving new mistress Madame de Pompadour , Louis XV. transferred the office of a “royal censor for aesthetic and historical writings”, in 1735 that of a “police censor”. In 1745 he also received a "pension" (constant annual payment) of 1000 livre from the king's funds, which secured him financially.

In 1748 his new piece Catalina was sold to King Louis XV. performed and demonstratively applauded and praised by the courtiers to offend Voltaire , another favorite of Madame de Pompadour. This had become a nuisance to the king and shortly before had fallen out of favor. In 1742 Crébillon had banned his play Mahomet by virtue of his censorship. Voltaire tried in sequence with five tragedies of Crebillon selected subjects (u. A. With Oreste to Crebillon's Electra ) to prove his superiority.

Crébillon's last piece Le Triumvirat (1754) was unsuccessful.

His son Claude-Prosper (1707–1777), called Crébillon fils , is considered by literary historians to be important for the development of the Roman genre in the 18th century.

Works (selection)

Web link

Wikisource: Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon  - Sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Family genealogy
personal data
SURNAME Crébillon, Prosper Jolyot
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Prosper Jolyot sieur de Crais-Billon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1674
PLACE OF BIRTH Dijon
DATE OF DEATH June 17, 1762
Place of death Paris