Chamfort (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Claude Arnaud
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1740-1794
- Setting: France
- Principal Characters: Sébastien Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Honoré Gabriel Victor Riqueti, Abbé Siéyès, Marthe Buffon, Pierre-Louis Ginguené
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: France or French people, Love or romance, Eighteenth century, Wit or humor, French Revolution, Gossip, Nobility, Plays or playwrights, Epigrams
- Locales: France
Literary history presents occasional examples of writers known more for their celebrated friendships and reports of their sparkling conversational skills than for their actual writings. This is very much the case with Sébastien Roch Nicolas de Chamfort (1740?-1794), a complex and contradictory man of letters who was both blessed and cursed to live during the most turbulent period of French history. A would-be member of the nobility (as seen in his affected use of “de” Chamfort) who never forgot his merchant foster parents and who eagerly embraced the egalitarian ideals of the...
[The entire page is 2271 words long]
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