Antoine Houdar de la Motte

Antoine Houdar de La Motte ( born January 17, 1672 Paris, † December 26, 1731 in Paris) was a French writer.

La Motte (as he usually is, in literature, stories ) is now only known as a major figure in contemporary Parisian literary scene and as a major player in the so-called Second Querelle des Anciens et Modernes. He was in his time but thirty years through a respected poet, dramatist, and literary theorist.

He grew up the son of a hatter named Houdar, attended a Jesuit college and began studying law. His particular interest was, however, soon the theater. After the failure of his first set piece, the comedy Les originaux ( 1693), he decided to become a monk, his novitiate but broke off and was re- writer. He then wrote a series of tragedies, comedies, and especially ballet and opera librettos, some of which, such as the ballet L'Europe galante comedy, the " heroic Pastorale " Issé (both 1697 ), the ballet Le Triomphe de l' 'Art (1700) or the tragedy set to music Semele (1709 ) were very successful, while most of the others were dropped off at the expiration of a season.

Due to its initial success was La Motte access to the literary salons of the capital such as the Duchess of Maine or the Marquise de Lambert, where he effectively his poems, mostly odes, understood to carry forward. In 1709 he gave them collected in the band Odes out where, what was new to poetry, occasionally found also addressed the eclipsed by King Louis XIV and his endless wars, political present.

In 1710 he was elected to the Académie Française, also against the candidates, once befriended colleague Jean -Baptiste Rousseau, who made his disappointment with angry epigrams on him and other literary air.

1714 processed La Motte (now blind ) a larger portion of a recently published prose transmission of the Iliad to a version in verse and hung a Discours sur Homère to it, in which he tried to prove that this ancient author in his time, although commendable was, with the best of modern authors but could no longer keep up. When he was to, attacked by the translator, Anne Dacier, an admirer of the works of antiquity, La Motte answered with Scripture Réflexions sur la critique, prompting a continuation of the Querelle des Anciens et Modernes of 1687, with him so famous authors such as Fontenelle or Marivaux supported. In the context of this dispute, he argued now, paradoxically, for the use of prose instead of verse in all the narrative and dramatic genres, which animated the young Voltaire on the opposite side to an attack, for example.

His plea for the prose, however, did not prevent La Motte, 1719 a ribbon with rhymed fables to publish and, after the failure of three prose comedies, from 1722 his last pieces, four tragedies, again to write in verse, the usual pairs rhyming alexandrine.

1723 came his most successful work in the longer term, the gambling at the Portuguese royal court of the 14th century tragedy Inès de Castro. It is a very maudlin today's standards, psychologically flat piece to the (probably historical ) noble maid of honor Ines and her (not historical ) evil enemy, the queen, by which it is poisoned at the end, much to the dismay of the other, all of them highly noble people. La Motte this took elements of the later, also usually highly moral Drame Bourgeois ( Civil tragedy ) anticipate and dared according to Racine's Athalie as one of the first in a tragedy children on stage to show, even if only to have very short and talk without it.

In the twenties, he also dealt with the theory of the theater and published in 1730 four Discourse on tragédie and a suite [= continuation ] of the Reflexions sur la tragédie. In this he demanded, inter alia, greater flexibility in the classical principle of the three units, a tragedy at a single venue to play in its strict observance, representing a period of more than 24 hours and could not contain subplots. With his demand for more flexibility in dealing with the above-mentioned principle, which was undisputed for more than 80 years, he has been the trend for the further development of dramatic genres.

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