Gringore, Pierre

Gringore, Pierre (pyĕr grăNgôr`), c.1475–c.1539, French dramatist and poet. He produced ceremonial pageants and mystery plays and wrote the Jeu du prince des sots (1512), a dramatic tetralogy on contemporary politics, as well as a number of political and moral poems.

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Gringore, Pierre 

Born around 1475, probably in Thury-Harcourt (Calvados Department); died in 1538, probably in Lorraine. French dramatist, pamphleteer, and poet.

Gringore sympathetically depicted the townspeople in his poem The Chateau of Labor (1499). He was the author of pamphlets opposing the Roman curia. His short comic plays—the so-called soties, which were sharply political— became famous. Among them were The Hope for Peace (1510) and The Game of the Prince of Fools (1512), which ridiculed the Roman pope Julius II. Gringore was the author of the historical mystery The Life of Monseigneur St. Louis. Later, he switched to the reactionary camp. In the poem Heraldry of Heretics (1524), Gringore attempted to justify the Inquisition.

WORKS

Oeuvres complètes, vols. 1–2. Rome, 1858–77. In Russian translation in Khrestomatiia po istorii zarubezhnogo teatra, vol. 1. Moscow, 1953. Pages 144–46.

REFERENCES

Oulmont, C. Pierre Gringore. Paris, 1911.
Dittmann, W. Pierre Gringore als Dramatiker. Berlin, 1923. (Romanische Studien, fasc. 21. Edited by E. Ebering. [Contains a bibliography.])