Élie Catherine Fréron

Élie Catherine Fréron ( born January 20, 1718, Quimper / Britanny, † March 10, 1776 in Montrouge near Paris) was a French writer and journalist, whose name primarily thanks to his feuds with Voltaire enjoys a certain notoriety.

Life and work

Fréron was 15th child of a goldsmith and received his education at the Jesuit, in his native town, and then in Paris at the Collège Louis- le -Grand. In 1737 he became a novice in the Jesuit order and was briefly in Louis -le- Grand as a teacher.

1739, the end of his novitiate, he opted for an existence as a freelance writer and has been an employee in the anti-rationalist -oriented literary journal Observations sur les Écrits modern Abbé Desfontaines, which on the Louis -le- Grand was already been his teacher. When the Observations were set in 1745 on the death of Abbé gave Fréron immediately publishes its own magazine, the Lettres de Mme la comtesse de *** sur quelques Écrits modern. Here, he distinguished himself as so astute as intrepid and spitzzüngiger Critics also established authors, especially the Enlightenment. Already in 1746 he got to do it the first time with the authorities, than on the initiative of the royal mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, banned his magazine and he was temporarily imprisoned in Vincennes.

1748 Fréron Secretary and staff of the literary dilettante Duc d' Estouteville, with whom he wrote a partial transfer of Giambattista Marino's Adone, published in 1623.

1749, he founded a new journal, the Lettres sur quelques Écrits de ce temps, which was banned in the following year. In 1752 he reactivated it and renamed it in 1754 to L' Année littéraire. This every 10 days, a book publishing journal was then his life's work, which he also economically highly successful, led to his death. The tendency of the Année turn was unenlightened; aesthetically she was committed to the ideals of classical music. It was estimated in conservative Catholic and royalist - absolutist thinking circles and widely read and acted as a central organ of the opponents of the Enlightenment.

Now and again Fréron operated as a historian. He wrote a Histoire de Marie Stuart (along with the Abbé de Marsy, 1742) and Histoire de l'Empire d' Allemagne (8 vols, 1771).

It first been an admirer of Voltaire, Fréron already adopted this at the time of Observations with matter-of- polite but scathing reviews of an enemy who pursued him almost vindictive, 1760/61 had come down a hail of satires and epigrams to him and even in his play L' Écossaise (1760 ) under the name Frelon as vile gossip columnists presented him ( which was, however, in the first series of performances renamed to " Wasp "). The Geneva edition of his tragedy Tancrède from 1761 he put forward a frontispiece, the Fréron front of a tree shows a donkey, on which hangs a lyre. Particularly well known is the following malicious epigram of Voltaire:

( Recently, at the bottom of a valley, a snake bite Jean Fréron. What do you mean, what happened? The snake it was, the krepierte. )

Fréron who finally got through the victory of the Enlightenment in literature and intellectual history on the losing side, had already during his lifetime at times a tough time, although he possessed I. Leszczynski on powerful patrons, including the French queen Marie Leszczyńska and their father, Stanislaus. Have often made his opponents, who united to the Encyclopédie " philosophes " to ban his magazine. Twice he was even briefly detained. Even his sudden death from an attack of gout saw his friends caused by the anger over a renewed ban on the magazine. His opponents, however, declared its well-known tendency to drunkenness and gluttony to the cause.

Today Fréron is usually viewed from the perspective of Voltaire as malicious polemicist and rarely as the talented critic and pamphleteer, who he was. As a guide and promoter of young authors of the time such as Gilbert, Sabatier de Castres Clément and he was a key figure of the French counter - Enlightenment ( Contre- Lumières ) with a sustained effect until well into the 19th century.

But Denis Diderot, the editor of the Encyclopédie, playwright and philosopher, Fréron attacked with partly dishonest means, so he accused him of plagiarism of some of his plays, and designed this "evidence".

His 1754 born son Louis -Marie Stanislas Fréron took over after his father's death the publication of L'Année littéraire and led them further to 1791, and then publish them as supporters of the Revolution and later a member of the Mountain party Orateur du Peuple.

Works

• Ad Bellonam, ode, authore Fréron Elia, EA apud Joannem Poisson, without place, 1737, 8 °, 4 pp.
• Histoire de Marie Stuart ( with the Abbé de Marsy ), EA without a printer, London (Paris), 1742, 2 vols (2 ), 600, (2), 215, ( 1) S.
• Lettre sur l' oraison funebre du Cardinal Fleury Père de Neuville, Jésuite, EA without a printer, without place, no date, 1743, 4 °, 16 pp.
• Lettre de l' auteur de l' ode sur les conquestes du roy, à un ami, EA without a printer, without place, 1744
• Cashew et Zirphile, conte, EA minutia, without place, 1744, 8 °, 108 pp.
• Réponse du public à l' auteur d' cashew, EA minutia, without place, 1744, 36 pp.
• Les Conquêtes du roi, ode, EA Prault fils, Paris, 1744.
• La reputation ode par l' abbé Fréron, EA Prault fils, Paris, 1744, 8 °, 10, (2) S.
• Plan d'une nouvelle et Regulations Académie: avec des éclaircissemens, EA without a printer, without place, 1744, 4 °, 16 pp.
• Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy, 1745
• Les plaisirs ou les Amours de vrais Vénus et d' Adonis, part transfer ad Italian, 1748

• Suite des lettres sur la musique en réponse à celle de Francoise Jean -Jacques Rousseau, ( with Jean -Jacques Baudinet ), EA without a printer, Geneva, 1754, 8 °, 40 pp.
• Avertissement au sujet du nouvel ouvrage périodique intitulé l' Année littéraire, par M. Fréron of Académies d' Angers, de Montauban et de Nancy, EA Lambert, Panckoucke, Lacombe, Delalain, Le Jay, Amsterdam and Paris, ( 1754), 12 °, 12 pp.
• Histoire de l'Empire d' Allemagne (1771, 8 vols )
• Les deux ou les Matrones Infidélités démasquées. Ouvrage posthumous de M. Fréron, enrichi de Notes curieuses Interesantes et avec figures, EA au Temple de la Vérité, Paris, 1776-2 parts, 8 °, X-24 and 98 P

Publishing and collaboration

• Lettres de Mme la comtesse de *** sur quelques Écrits modern (Book, 1746 )
• Lettres sur quelques Écrits de ce temps (Journal, with the Abbé de La Porte ), EA Duchesne, Geneva, Nancy and Paris from 1749 to 1750 and from 1752 to 1754, 13 vols in 12 °
• L' Année littéraire (Journal, 1754-1791, 292 vol. ) Fréron was editor until 1776. The journal was continued until 1791 by Freron son Louis -Marie Stanislas Fréron.

Werkausgabe

• Opuscules M. de F *** (default selection ), EA Arkstée & Merkus, Amsterdam, 1753, 3 vols 12 ° ( 4), IV, 408; 420; (6), 431 (1) p

Bibliography

• Jean Balcou Fréron contre les Philosophes Librairie Droz, Geneva, 1975
• Jean Balcou, Sophie Barthelemy et André Cariou ( Ed. ), Fréron, polémiste et critique d'art, vector Interférences, 2001 ( ISBN 2868475280 )
• Yann Brekilien, prestige du Finistère, Editions France- Empire, 1969
• Charles Monselet, Fréron ou l' illustrious critique, Paris, 1864
• Trévédy J., et sa famille Fréron d'après des documents authentiques & inédits toutes les rectifiant biographies, Saint -Brieuc, L. & R. Prud'homme, 1889