Raymond Picard

Raymond Picard ( born August 6, 1917 in Bligny Aube, † September 5, 1975 in Bligny Aube ); was a French linguist and literary theorist.

Life and work

Picard went to Nancy to school and studied in Paris. In 1945, he was the Agrégation and until 1947 was a high school teacher in Chartres. From 1947 to 1954 he taught at the Institut Français in London and Athens. He habilitated in 1955 with the two theses La Carrière de Jean Racine ( Paris 1956, 1979) and " Corpus Racinianum ". Recueil - inventaire of textes et documents du XVIIe siècle concernant Jean Racine ( Paris 1956 Nouveau " Corpus Racinianum ", 1976). From 1954 to 1956 he taught at the University of Lyon, 1956-1963 at the University of Lille and from 1963 at the Sorbonne in the chair of French literature of the 17th century. Picard got the Pléiade edition of the works of Jean Racine. In a famous polemic he opposed Roland Barthes and his style of literary criticism, which estimated the literary biography of the author for the interpretation of his text small.

Picard was Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

Other works

• Les prestiges (novel), Paris 1947
• La poésie française de 1640 à 1680, 2 vols, Paris 1964-1969
• Nouvelle critique ou nouvelle imposture, 1965 ( Italian Milan 1966 English: New criticism or new fraud, Pullman, Washington State University Press in 1969? )
• Polémiste Racine, Paris 1967
• Génie de la littérature française 1600-1800. Introduction à quelques lectures Paris 1970 ( English New York in 1970; German: from La Fontaine to Rousseau Critical Models for French literature, Munich 1970. )