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La Bruyère: Caractères: Study GuideLa BruyèreJean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 – 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist, who was noted for his satire. Very little is known of the events of this part—or, indeed, of any part—of his life. The impression derived from the few notices of him is of a silent, observant, but somewhat awkward man, resembling in manners Joseph Addison. His critical book, Caractères appeared in 1688. It garnered numerous enemies, but despite that, most notations about him are favorable—notably that of Saint-Simon, an acute judge and one bitterly prejudiced against commoners generally. A curious passage in a letter by Boileau to Racine exists, however, in which the writer regrets that "nature has not made La Bruyère as agreeable as he would like to be." CaractèresThe plan of the Caractères is thoroughly original and skillful combination of elements exists in it. The treatise of Theophrastus may have furnished the concept. With the ethical generalizations and social Dutch paintings accompanying his original, La Bruyère combined the peculiarities of the Montaigne Essais, of the Pensées, and Maximes of which Pascal and La Rochefoucauld are the masters respectively, and lastly of that peculiar seventeenth-century product, the "portrait" or elaborate literary picture of the personal and mental characteristics of an individual. The result was quite unlike anything that had been seen previously, and, it has not been exactly reproduced since, although the essay of Addison and Steele resembles it very closely, especially in the introduction of fancy portraits. La Bruyère's privileged position at Chantilly provided him with a unique vantage point from which he could witness the hypocrisy and corruption of the court of Louis XIV. As a Christian moralist, he aimed at reforming people's manners and ways by publishing records of his observations of aristocratic foibles and follies, which earned him many enemies at the court. In the titles of his work, and in its extreme desultoriness, La Bruyère reminds the reader of Montaigne, but he aimed too much at sententiousness to attempt even the apparent continuity of the great essayist. The short paragraphs of which his chapters consist are made up of maxims proper, of criticisms literary and ethical, and above all, of the celebrated sketches of individuals baptized with names taken from the plays and romances of the time. ——Wikipedia Reading Quizzes
La Bruyère: Caractères: reading quiz The TextLes caractères. Project Gutenberg. The 'Characters' of Jean de La Bruyère. Project Gutenberg. Background and SummaryBiographie. Wayback Machine. Back to the schedule page. Programs and information provided by hcexres@prismnet.com. |