FrenchHistory.net - 75 - THE CENTURY OF LOUIS XIV. Literature & Art with the seventeenth century.

75 - THE CENTURY OF LOUIS XIV

Literature & Art with the seventeenth century.

THE CENTURY OF LOUIS XIV

MONARCHY (of 1483 to 1789) » Apogee of monarchical France

Descartes.

Descartes, born in 1596 in the Hague (in Touraine), died in Stockholm in 1650. - Descartes was before all a large philosopher, who, by a new method, founded on the obviousness, helped with the triumph of the reason on the routine.

It is also a great writer who contributed to fix French prose.

Finally Descartes was at the same time a large mathematician and a large physicist.

Pierre Crow.

Pierre Crow, born in Rouen in 1606, died in Paris in 1684. Author of Cid, Cinna, Horace, Polyeucte, the Liar, etc.

Pascal.

Pascal, born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1623, died in Paris in 1662. - Pascal is also a large philosopher, a genious thinker: its Thoughts are one of the strongest works which produced the human spirit.

Incomparable writer, it added to the clearness and the elegance of French prose.

Finally it was at the same time, like Descartes, large mathematician and large physicist.

Bourdaloue preaching before the court.

The Bourdaloue Jesuit was considered by his contemporaries the first of the preachers: one preferred it in Bossuet itself.

Mrs.

de Sévigné especially admires in him the reasoning and energy "It removed often me breathing, writes she, by the extreme attention with which one is hung with the force and with the accuracy of its speeches… It strikes like a deaf person, saying truths to cut down support; save which can, it always goes its way "Bourdaloue preached ten Lents before the Court.

Castle of Be worth (close to Melun).

In the history of architecture the seventeenth century is the century of the castles, as the thirteenth one is that of the cathedrals.

Hardouin Mansard raised the castles of Versailles, Marly, Trianon, Dampierre; François Mansard built that of Houses, the frontage of the Carnavalet hotel and the hotel of Vrillière, where is the Bank today.

Perrault is the author of the Colonnade of the Louvre; the castle of Be worth, that Fouquet was made build in 1653, is the work of Levau.

Ours drew the parks and the gardens.

The seventeenth century, considered as one intellectual time, can be divided into two parts: 1° the time of Richelieu and Mazarin; 2° the "Century of Louis XIV." - 1° the time of Richelieu and Mazarin is that of the creative geniuses: in the literature, Descartes melts French philosophy; Pascal writes the Provincial ones and the Thoughts; Crow gives to France its more beautiful tragedy, Cid, and its first comedy, the Liar.

In art, Nicolas Chick and Lesueur are our first great painters.

2° the "Century of Louis XIV" is extraordinary by the number of the men of genius: in the literature, Racine gives tragedies such as Andromaque, Britannicus, Athalie, etc, and a comedy, the Litigants; The Molière, largest of the comic poets, gives the Misanthropist, the Sanctimonious hypocrite, the Middle-class man gentleman, etc; Boileau writes the Poetic Art and of the Epistles; The Fountain, of the Fables; Mrs.

de Sévigné, of the Letters; Rochefoucauld, Maxims; the Heather, Characters.

Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Massillon, Fénelon, are the largest speakers of the pulpit.

In arts, Claude Lorrain is the first of the landscape designers; Puget and Coustou of large sculptors; Mansard and Perrault, of large architects; Lully creates the Opera.

Descartes.

Pierre Crow.

Pascal.

Bourdaloue preaching before the…

Castle of Be worth…

raw translation, not yet corrected