Jean Chapelain was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and writer.

Biography

Chapelain was born in Paris. His father wanted him to become a notary; but his mother, who had known Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...

, had decided otherwise. At an early age Chapelain began to qualify himself for literature, learning, under Nicolas Bourbon, and French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, and teaching himself Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 and Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

.

Having finished his studies, Chapelain taught Spanish to a young nobleman for a while, before being appointed tutor to the two sons of NHL le Hardy, sieur de la Trousse, grand-prévôt de France,Gouye de Longuemarre, ""Eclaircissemens sur un officier de la maison de nos rois, appelé roi des ribauds", in Constant Leber, ed. Collection des meilleurs dissertations, notices et traités particuliers relatifs à l'histoire de France, part V (1838:234) notes Nicolas Hardi, sieur de la Trousse, grand-prévôt de France; his son Sébastien inherited in 1595; "A M. de la Trousse, grand provost of France," in Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911. Attached for the next seventeen years to this family and given the responsibility of administering their fortune, he seems to have published nothing during this period, yet to have acquired a great reputation for potential.

His first published work was a preface for the Adone of Giambattista Marino, who printed and published that notorious poem at Paris. This was followed by a translation of Mateo Alemán

Mateo Alemán

Mateo Alemán y de Enero was a Spanish novelist and writer.He graduated at Seville University in 1564, studied later at Salamanca and Alcalá, and from 1571 to 1588 held a post in the treasury; in 1594 he was arrested on suspicion of malversation, but was speedily released...

's novel, Guzmán de Alfarache

Guzmán de Alfarache

Guzmán de Alfarache is a picaresque novel written by Mateo Alemán and published in two parts: the first in Madrid in 1599 with the title Primera parte de Guzmán de Alfarache, and the second in 1604, titled Segunda parte de la vida de Guzmán de Alfarache, atalaya de la vida humana.The works tells...

, and by four extremely indifferent odes, one of them addressed to Cardinal Richelieu. The credit of introducing the law of the dramatic unities into French literature

French literature

French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...

 has been claimed for many writers, and especially for the Abbé d'Aubignac

François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac

François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac was a French author who was born in Paris.His father practised at the Paris bar, and his mother was a daughter of the great surgeon Ambroise Paré...

, whose Pratique du théâtre appeared in 1657. Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

's theory had of course been enunciated in the Art poétique of Julius Caesar Scaliger

Julius Caesar Scaliger

Julius Caesar Scaliger was an Italian scholar and physician who spent a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the new learning...

 in 1561, and subsequently by other writers, but undoubtedly it was the action of Chapelain that transferred it from the region of theory to that of actual practice.

In a conversation with Richelieu in about 1632, reported by the abbé d'Olivet

Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d'Olivet

Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d'Olivet, Abbot of Olivet was a French abbot, writer, grammarian and translator. He was elected the fourth occupant of Académie française seat 31....

, Chapelain maintained the importance of maintaining the unities of time, place and action, and it is explicitly stated that the doctrine was new to the cardinal and to the poets who were in his pay. Rewarded with a pension of a thousand crowns, and from the first an active member of the newly-constituted Academy, Chapelain drew up the plan of the grammar and dictionary, the compilation of which was to be a principal function of the young institution, and at Richelieu's command drew up the Sentiments de l’Académie sur le Cid.

In 1656 he published, in a magnificent format, the first twelve cantos of his celebrated epic on Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...

, La Pucelle, on which he had been working for twenty years. Six editions of the poem were disposed of in eighteen months. This was the end of the poetic reputation of Chapelain, "the legist of Parnassus." Later the slashing satire of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was a French poet and critic.-Biography:Boileau was born in the rue de Jérusalem, in Paris, France. He was brought up to the law, but devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière...

 resulted in Chapelain ("Le plus grand poète Français qu'ait jamais été et du plus solide jugement," as he is called in Colbert's list) taking his place among the failures of modern art.

Chapelain's reputation as a critic survived, and in 1663 he was employed by Colbert to draw up an account of contemporary men of letters, destined to guide the king in his distribution of pensions. In this pamphlet, as in his letters, he shows to far greater advantage than in his unfortunate epic. His prose is incomparably better than his verse; his criticisms are remarkable for their justice and generosity; his erudition and kindliness are well-attested; the royal attention was directed alike towards the author’s firmest friends and bitterest enemies. To him the young Jean Racine

Jean Racine

Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

 was indebted not only for advice, but also for the pension of six hundred livres which was so useful to him. The catholicity of Chapelain's taste is shown by his De la lecture des vieux romans (printed 1870), in which he praises the chanson de geste

Chanson de geste

The chansons de geste, Old French for "songs of heroic deeds", are the epic poems that appear at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, nearly a hundred years before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères and...

, forgotten by his generation.

Chapelain refused many honours, and his disinterestedness makes it necessary to receive with caution the stories of Gilles Ménage

Gilles Ménage

Gilles Ménage was a French scholar.He was born at Angers, the son of Guillaume Ménage, king's advocate at Angers, where Gilles was born....

 and Tallemant des Réaux

Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux

Gédéon Tallemant, Sieur des Réaux was a French writer known for his Historiettes, a collection of short biographies.-Biography:...

, who claimed that he became a miser, and that a considerable fortune was found hoarded in his apartments when he died.