- Jean-François Regnard
Jean-François Regnard (
7 February 1655 -4 September 1709 ) was "the most distinguished, afterMolière , of the comic poets of the seventeenth century", [Richard Adolf Ploetz, Carl Julius Ploetz, "A manual of French literature" 1878:254] was adramatist , born inParis , who is equally famous now for the travel diary he kept of a voyage in 1681.Regnard inherited a fortune from his father, a successful merchant who had given him an excellent classical education; he then increased it, he affirms, by
gambling . He took to traveling, and on a return voyage from Italy in 1678 was at the age of twenty-two captured by anAlgeria npirate , sold as a slave inAlgiers and taken to [Constantinople, where the French consul paidransom for hisrelease . He went on traveling, undaunted. His "Voyage de Flandre et de Hollande, commencé le 26 avril 1681." [Regnault's voyages, and excerpts from them have been reprinted several times.] reporting his trip through the Low Countries, Denmark and Sweden, where he dallied at the courts of Christian V and Charles XI and then north to Lapland, returning through Poland, Hungary and Germany to France, is mined by social historians. The section often published on its own, his "Voyage de Laponie", inspired by the published journey ofMaupertuis to the arctic circle (1672), describes the way of life of theSami ofLapland ; it was not published until 1731, when its description of the backwardness and simplicity of the Sami people, their curious pagan customs, alcohol addiction and untidy lifestyle, introduced these strangers to cultured Europe. [Jarkko Saarinen, "Finnish Lapland" also mentions two seventeenth-century works in Latin on Lapland, in Gregory D. Ringer, "Destinations: Cultural Landscapes of Tourism" 1998:156]After his return to
Paris he purchased a sinecure in the Treasury that required no attention, and wrote farces and skits for theThéâtre italien , 1688-96. After inheriting his mother's considerable fortune in 1693, he devoted the time divided between his "hôtel" in Paris and his country house, the château of Grillon, nearDourdan , to writing comedies in verse for theComédie française , twenty-three in total, the best of them being "Le Joueur" ("The Gamester", 1696), "Le Distrait" (1697), "Les Menechmes" and his masterwork, "Le Légataire universelle" ("The residuary legatee", 1706), following closely in the steps ofMolière . [John Gassner, Edward Quinn, "The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama" (2003), "s.v." "Regnard, Jean François".] He was admired by Boileau.He died at his château of Grillon in 1709.
Notes
External links
*
* [http://www.bibliomonde.net/auteur/jean-francois-regnard-803.html Bibliomonde: Jean-François Regnard]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.