Antoine Furetière (December 28, 1619 -
May 14, 1688), French scholar and
miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris.
He first studied law, and practised for a time as an advocate, but eventually took orders and after various preferments became
abbé of Chalivoy in the diocese of Bourges in
1662. In his leisure moments he devoted himself to letters, and in virtue of his satires--Nouvelle Allégorique, ou histoire
des derniers troubles arrivés au royaume d'éloquence (1658); Voyage de Mercure (1653)--he was admitted a member of the
Académie française in 1662. That learned body had long promised a complete
dictionary of the French tongue; and when they heard that Furetière was on the point of
issuing a work of a similar nature, they interfered, alleging that he had purloined from their stores, and that they possessed
the exclusive privilege of publishing such a book.
After much bitter recrimination on both sides the offender was expelled in 1685; but for this act of injustice he took a
severe revenge in his satire, Couches de l'académie (Amsterdam, 1687). His Dictionnaire universel was posthumously
published in. 1690 (Rotterdam, 2 vols.). It was afterwards revised and improved by the Protestant jurist, Henri Basnage de Beauval (1656-1710), who published his
edition (3 vols.) in 1701; and it was only superseded by the compilation known as the Dictionnaire de Trévoux (Paris, 3
vols., 1704; 7th ed., 5 vols., 1771), which was in fact little more than a reimpression of Basnage's edition.
Furetière is perhaps even better known as the author of Le Roman bourgeois (1666). It cast ridicule on the fashionable
romances of Mlle de Scudéry and of La Calprenède, and is of interest as descriptive of the everyday life of
his times. There is no element of burlesque, as in Scarron's Roman comique. The
author contents himself with stringing together a number of episodes and portraits, obviously drawn from life, without much
attempt at sequence.
The Fureteriana, which appeared in Paris eight years after Furetière's death, is a collection of but little value.
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