Gilles Boileau, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Gilles Boileau

French translator

Date of Birth: 22-Oct-1631

Place of Birth: Paris, ĂŽle-de-France, France

Date of Death: 10-Mar-1669

Profession: poet, translator, linguist

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Libra


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About Gilles Boileau

  • Gilles Boileau (22 October 1631, Paris – 18 March 1669), the elder brother of the more famous Nicolas Boileau-DesprĂ©aux, was a French translator and member of the AcadĂ©mie française. Boileau was well regarded as a classicist by his contemporaries and published a verse translation of the fourth book of the Aeneid and prose translations of writings of Diogenes LaĂ«rtius and of Epictetus, whose life he wrote.
  • He received a royal sinecure as contrĂ´leur de l’argenterie du roi, and though his poetry is generally accounted mediocre, he was elected to the AcadĂ©mie française in January 1659, an event that gave rise to an incident that proved divisive in the French world of letters.
  • The elder Boileau (who alone carried the name during his lifetime, the brother, with whom he was on ill terms in later years, being called "DesprĂ©aux") had attacked in print Mlle de ScudĂ©ry and the grammarian and lexicographer Gilles MĂ©nage, two friends of Paul Pellisson, who mounted a campaign against the election of Gilles Boileau.
  • In the affair Jean Chapelain, whose disastrous epic La Pucelle had been severely criticised by Pellisson, nevertheless came to defend him; doubtless, his own enmity for Boileau was affected by the satiric parody of Le Cid, Le Chapelain dĂ©coiffĂ© (1665), jointly written by the brothers Boileau and occasioned by Chapelain's selection by Colbert to oversee the choices of authors to receive royal pensions. After the election of Gilles Boileau, pressed by Pierre SĂ©guier, Pellisson avoided meetings of the AcadĂ©mie for a decade, until after Boileau's death.

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