Chapelain, Jean

Chapelain, Jean (zhäN shäplăN`), 1595–1674, French critic and poet. His works include La Pucelle (1656), an epic poem about Joan of Arc. Chapelain was a founding member of the French Academy, for which he composed a celebrated attack upon Pierre Corneille's Le Cid.

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Chapelain, Jean 

Born Dec. 4, 1595, in Paris; died there Feb. 22,1674. French writer and literary theorist.

Chapelain was a founding member of the Académie Française. In his Letter on the Twenty-four Hour Rule (1630) and his two treatises on representative poetry (1635), he anticipated N. Boileau’s work on the literary theory of classicism. He wrote odes, sonnets, madrigals, and works of historiography and literary history. Chapelain’s epic poem The Maid (cantos 1–12, published 1656; cantos 13–24, published 1882) was burlesqued by Voltaire.

WORKS

Opuscules critiques. Paris, 1936.

REFERENCES

Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1946. Pages 377–78, 380.
Bray, R. La Formation de la doctrine classique de France. Paris, 1927.
Hunter, A. C. Lexique de lalangue de J. Chapelain. Geneva, 1967.