René Pomeau

René Pomeau (born February 20, 1917 in Beautiran ; † February 26, 2000 in Clamart ) was a French literary historian, best known for his work on Voltaire .

Pomeau attended the Lycée Thiers high school in Marseille and studied at the University of Aix-en-Provence and from 1937 at the École normal supérieure (ENS) (Agrégation de Lettres 1941) and was then a high school teacher in Angoulême and from 1945 in Tours . From 1949 he was an assistant at the University of Bordeaux and from 1950 at the University of Poitiers . During the Vichy regime he was in Angoulême, where he published a newspaper, La Charente Libre . After the war he was at the University of Toulouse . In 1954 he attracted attention with his dissertation La Religion de Voltaire (published in 1956 and thereafter in several editions) and was then professor in Toulouse. In 1961 he was accepted into the jury of the ENS entrance exams and in 1963 he became a professor at the Sorbonne .

He founded the French Society for the Study of the Eighteenth Century, which organized international conferences, particularly in the Far East. In 1979 he became president of the Societé d´histoire littéraire de la France. In 1988 he became a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques .

As a literary historian, Pomeau had numerous students in France. He was less interested in literary theory than in studying texts and discovering new texts. His Magnum Opus is a multi-volume work on Voltaire that appeared from 1985 onwards, and he edited many of Voltaire's works such as the Dictionnaire philosophique or Voltaire's historical works in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade . In addition to Voltaire, he was also occupied with other Enlightenment authors such as Beaumarchais , Montesquieu and Choderlos de Laclos . In 1999 his memoirs appeared.

He was married and had three sons.

Fonts

• Memoires d'un siecle, entre XIXème et XXème , Fayard, 1999
• as co-author and editor: Voltaire en son temps , 5 volumes, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 1985–1994 and two volumes in Fayard, 1995
• Beaumarchais ou la bizarre Destinée , Paris, Puf, 1987
• Laclos ou le paradoxe , Paris, Hatier, 1975
• L'Âge classique: 1680-1720 , volume 3, Arthaud, 1971
• L'Europe des Lumières, cosmopolitisme et unité européenne au XVIII Siecle , Paris, Stock, 1966
• La Religion de Voltaire (1954) , Bibliothèque de la Pléïade, 1957, revised new edition in 1969 by Nizet and 1974.
• Politique de Voltaire , Paris 1970

Web links

• Obituary in the Guardian