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AUBIGNAC, FRANCOIS HEDELIN, ABBE

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Originally appearing in Volume V02, Page 890 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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AUBIGNAC, See also:FRANCOIS HEDELIN, See also:ABBE D' (1604-1676), See also:French author, was See also:born at See also:Paris on the 4th of See also:August 1604. His See also:father practised at the Paris See also:bar, and his See also:mother was a daughter of the See also:great surgeon Ambroise See also:Pare. Francois Hedelin was educated for his father's profession, but, after practising for some See also:time at See also:Nemours he abandoned See also:law, took See also:holy orders, and was appointed See also:tutor to one of See also:Richelieu's nephews, the duc de Fronsac. This patronage secured for him the See also:abbey of Aubignac and of Mainac. The See also:death of the duc de Fonsac in 1646 put an end to hopes of further preferment, and the Abbe d'Aubignac retired to Nemours, occupying himself with literature till his death on the 25th of See also:July 1676. He took an energetic See also:share in the See also:literary controversies of his time. Against Gilles See also:Menage he wrote a See also:Terence justifie (1656); he laid claim to having originated the See also:idea of the " See also:Carte de tendee " of Mlle de See also:Scudery's Clelie; and after being a professed admirer of See also:Corneille he turned against him because he had neglected to mention the abbe in his Discours sur le poeme dramatique. He was the author of four tragedies: La Cyminde (1642), La Pucelle d'See also:Orleans (1642), Zenobie (1647) and Le Martyre de Sainte See also:Catherine (165o). Zenobie was written with the intention of affording a See also:model in which the strict rules of the See also:drama, as understood by the theorists, were observed. In the choice of subjects for his plays, he seems to have been guided by a See also:desire to illustrate the various kinds of tragedy—patriotic, See also:antique and religious. The dramatic authors whom he was in the See also:habit of criticizing were not slow to take See also:advantage of the opportunity for See also:retaliation offered by the See also:production of these mediocre plays. It is as a theorist that D'Aubignac still arrests See also:attention.

It has been proved that to See also:

Jean See also:Chapelain belongs the See also:credit of having been the first to establish as a See also:practical law the See also:convention of the unities that plays so large a See also:part in the See also:history of the French See also:stage; but the See also:laws of dramatic method and construction generally were codified by d'Aubignac in his Pratique du thedtre. The See also:book was only published in 1657, but had been begun at the desire of Richelieu as See also:early as 1640. His Conjectures academiques sur l'Iliade d'Homere, which was not published until nearly See also:forty years after his death, threw doubts on the existence of See also:Homer, and anticipa ted in some sense the conclusions of See also:Friedrich August See also:Wolf in his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795). The contents of the Pratique du thedtre are summarized by F. Brunetiere in his See also:notice of Aubignac in the Grande Encyclopidie. See also G. See also:Saintsbury, Hist. of See also:Criticism, bk. v., and H. Rigault, Hist. de la querelle See also:des anciens et modernes. (1859).

End of Article: AUBIGNAC, FRANCOIS HEDELIN, ABBE

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