François-Antoine Devaux

François-Antoine Devaux (12 December 1712, Lunéville - 11 April or 12 December 1796, Lunéville) was a lorrain (and, after 1766, French) poet and gallant. He wrote under the name "Panpan"

Life

Called ironically "the most modest and discrete of the poets of Lorraine" by Van Bever, Devaux began as a lawyer at the sovereign court at Nancy. The favours bestowed by the court of Lorraine on Devaux's lover Françoise de Graffigny enabled Devaux to join her there, where he was received by Leopold I of Lorraine and then by Stanislas Leszczynski. Devaux was a gallant poet and a spirited reader and improviser, and thus was taken in by the noble families of the court, becoming the lover of Marie-Charlotte de Boufflers and Marie Françoise Catherine de Beauvau-Craon as well as Graffigny. However, he died in obscurity.

Works

*A stage comedy, "les Engagements indiscrets", put on in Paris 26 December 1752 at the Théâtre-Français
*"Discours sur l’esprit philosophique", read at the Académie de Nancy on 20 October "1752",
*Poems, of which many are now lost

Source

* Ad. Van Bever, "Anthologie littéraire de l’Alsace et la Lorraine", 1920.