Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes.
Louis-Marcelin, marquis de Fontanes
(6 March 1757 – 17 March 1821) was a French
poet
and
politician
.
Biography
[
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]
Born in
Niort
(
Deux-Sevres
), he belonged to a noble
Protestant
family of
Languedoc
which had been reduced to poverty by the revocation of the
edict of Nantes
. His father and grandfather remained Protestant, but he was himself brought up as a
Catholic
. His parents died in 1774?1775, and in 1777 Fontanes went to
Paris
, where he found a friend in the dramatist
Jean-Francois Ducis
.
[1]
His first published poems, some of which were inspired by English models, appeared in the
Almanach des Muses
;
Le Cri de mon coeur
, describing his own sad childhood, in 1778; and
La Fort de Navarre
in 1780. His translation from
Alexander Pope
,
L'Essai sur l'homme
, was published with an elaborate preface in 1783, and
La Chartreuse
and
Le Jour des morts
in the same year,
Le Verger
in 1788 and his
Epitre sur l'edit en faveur des non-catholiques
, and the
Essai sur l'astronomie
in 1789.
[1]
Fontanes was a moderate reformer, and in 1790 he became joint-editor of the
Moderateur
. He married at
Lyon
in 1792, and his wife's first child was born during their flight from the siege of that town. Fontanes was in hiding in Paris when the four citizens of Lyon were sent to the Convention to protest against the cruelties of
Collot d'Herbois
. The petition was drawn up by Fontanes, and the authorship being discovered, he fled from Paris and found shelter at
Sevran
, near
Livry
, and afterwards at
Andelys
.
[1]
On the fall of
Robespierre
he was made professor of literature in the
Ecole Centrale des Quatre-Nations
, and he was one of the original members of the Institute. In the
Memorial
, a journal edited by
Jean-Francois de la Harpe
, he discreetly advocated reaction to the monarchical principle. He was exiled by the
Directory
and made his way to
London
, where he was closely associated with
Chateaubriand
.
[1]
He soon returned to France, and his admiration for
Napoleon
, who commissioned him to write an
eloge
on
George Washington
,
[2]
secured his return to the Institute and his political promotion. In 1802 he was elected to the legislative chamber, of which he was president from 1804 to 1810. Other honors and titles followed. He has been accused of servility to Napoleon, but he had the courage to remonstrate with him on the judicial murder of the
duc d'Enghien
, and as grand master of the
University of Paris
(1808?1815) he consistently supported religious and monarchical principles. He acquiesced in the
Bourbon restoration
, and was made a
marquis
in 1817. He died on March 17, 1821, in Paris, leaving eight
cantos
of an unfinished
epic poem
entitled
La Grece sauvee
.
[1]
The verse of Fontanes is polished and musical in the style of the 18th century. It was not collected until 1839, when
Sainte-Beuve
edited the
Œuvres
(2 vols.) of Fontanes, with a sympathetic critical study of the author and his career. But by that time the
Romantic movement
was in the ascendant and Fontanes met with small appreciation.
[1]
See also
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Notes
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- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain
:
Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911). "
Fontanes, Louis, Marquis de
".
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 608.
- ^
For more on this funeral oration, see Maurice Guerrini,
Napoleon and Paris: Thirty Years of History
, ed. and trans. Margery Weiner (New York: Walker and Company, 1970), 36.
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