Jean Chapelain

Born Dec. 4, 1595, in Paris; died there Feb. 22,1674. French writer and literary theorist.

Chapelain was a founding member of the Académie Française. In his Letter on the Twenty-four Hour Rule (1630) and his two treatises on representative poetry (1635), he anticipated N. Boileau’s work on the literary theory of classicism. He wrote odes, sonnets, madrigals, and works of historiography and literary history. Chapelain’s epic poem The Maid (cantos 1–12, published 1656; cantos 13–24, published 1882) was burlesqued by Voltaire.