Ferdinand Brunetière

Ferdinand Brunetière
File:Portrait of Ferdinand Brunetière.jpg
Born	Ferdinand Vincent-de-Paul Marie Brunetière 19 July 1849 Toulon, France
Died	9 December 1906 (aged 57) Paris, France
Occupation	Literary critic
Writing career
Language	French

Ferdinand Vincent-de-Paul Marie Brunetière (French pronunciation: [fɛʁdinɑ̃ vɛ̃sɑ̃ də pɔl maʁi bʁyntjɛʁ]; 19 July 1849 – 9 December 1906) was a French writer and critic.

Personal and public life

Early years

Ferdinand Vincent-de-Paul Marie Brunetière was born in Toulon, Var, Provence. After school at Marseille, he studied in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Desiring a teaching career, he entered for examination at the École Normale Supérieure, but failed, and the outbreak of war in 1870 prevented him trying again. He turned to private tuition and literary criticism. After the publication of successful articles in the Revue Bleue, he became connected with the Revue des Deux Mondes, first as contributor, then as secretary and sub-editor, and finally, in 1893, as principal editor.

Career

In 1886 Brunetière was appointed professor of French language and literature at the École Normale, a singular honour for one who had not passed through the academic mill; and later he presided with distinction over various conferences at the Sorbonne and elsewhere. He was decorated with the Legion of Honour in 1887, and became a member of the Académie française in 1893.

The published works of Brunetière consist largely of reprinted papers and lectures. They include six series of Études critiques (1880–1898) on French history and literature; Le Roman naturaliste (1883); Histoire et Littérature, three series (1884–1886); Questions de critique (1888; second series, 1890). The first volume of L'Évolution de genres dans l'histoire de la littérature, lectures in which a formal classification, founded on Darwinism, is applied to the phenomena of literature, appeared in 1890; and his later works include a series of studies (2 vols, 1894) on the evolution of French lyrical poetry during the 10th century, a history of French classic literature begun in 1904, a monograph on Honoré de Balzac (1906), and various pamphlets of a polemical nature dealing with questions of education, science and religion. Among these may be mentioned Discours académiques (1901), Discours de combat (1900, 1903), L'Action sociale du Christianisme (1904), Sur les chemins de la croyance (1905).

Political activity

Brunetière was a leading member of the anti-Dreyfusards.

Personal views

Before 1895 Brunetière was widely known as a rationalist, freethinking scholar. That year, however, he published an article, "Après une visite au Vatican" (After a Visit to the Vatican), in which he argued that science was incapable of providing a convincing social morality and that faith alone could achieve that result. This work introduced the metaphor of the "bankruptcy of science".

Shortly afterwards, Brunetière converted to Roman Catholicism. As a Catholic, he was orthodox and his political sympathies were conservative. He authored the article on "Literary and Theological Appreciation of Bossuet" for the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Works

• Études Critiques sur l’Histoire de la Littérature Française (8 vols., 1880–1907).
• Le Roman Naturaliste (1883).
• Histoire et Littérature (3 vols., 1884).
• Questions de Critique (1888).
• Nouvelles Questions de Critique (1890).
• Évolution de la Critique (1890).
• Évolution des Genres dans l’Histoire de la Littérature (2 vols., 1890).
• Epoques du Théâtre Français (2 vols., 1891–1892).
• Histoire de la Littérature Française Classique (4 vols., 1891–1892).
• Essais sur la Littérature Contemporaine (1892).
• Évolution de la Poésie Lyrique en France au dix-neuvième Siècle (2 vols., 1892–1894).
• La Science et la Religion (1895).
• Nouveaux Essais sur la Littérature Contemporaine (1895).
• Bases de la Croyance (1896).
• La Renaissance de l'Idéalisme (1896).
• Manuel de l’Histoire de la Littérature Française (1898).
• Discours Académiques (1901).
• Les Raisons Actuelles de Croire (1901).
• Victor Hugo (2 vols., 1902).
• Variétés Littéraires (1904).
• Cinq Lettres sur Ernest Renan (1904).
• Sur les Chemins de la Croyance (1904).
• Honoré de Balzac, 1799–1850 (1906).
• Discours de Combat (3 vols., 1900–1907).
• Lettres de Combat (posthumous, 1912).

Translated into English

• Essays in French Literature (1898, D. Nichol Smith)
• Manual of the History of French Literature (1898).
• Honoré de Balzac (1906). 2nd edition (1907).
• The Law of the Drama (1914).
• Science and Religion (2016, Erik Butler).

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Ferdinand Brunetière — A French critic and professor, born at Toulon, 19 July, 1849; died at Paris, 9 December, 1906. After finishing his studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, he took the entrance examination of the Ecole Normale, a higher training-school for teachers, but failed on account of deficiency in Greek. When the Franco-German war broke out, he enlisted in the heavy-armed infantry. After the war he returned to Paris and led a very precarious life as a teacher in private schools. In 1874, he began to write for the "Revue des Deux Mondes", then edited by Charles Buloz, whose principal associate he soon became. From the first he was an opponent of the Naturalist School, which in retaliation feigned to ignore him and declared that the name of Brunetière was the pseudonym of some writer of no account. His mastery of criticism and his immense and minute learning, which were combined with a keen and cutting style, soon proved his intellectual power. The editor-ship in chief of the "Revue des Deux Mondes" was tendered to him in 1893. Although he had not attained the higher academic degrees, he was appointed professor of the French language and literature in the Ecole Normale in 1886, a position he held up to 1905, when the school was reorganized. On account of his conversion to Catholicism he was dropped from the list of professors. He was elected to the French Academy in 1893.

In 1897, M. Brunetière lectured in the United States, under the auspices of the Alliance Française. After delivering nine lectures on French poetry in the annual course of the Percy Turnbull lectures on poetry, at the Johns Hopkins University, he travelled through the country speaking to enthusiastic audiences on classical and contemporary literature. He met with a success that no French lecturer before him had ever attained. In New York more than three thousand persons gathered to hear him. His most famous lecture was on Zola, whose so-called lifelike pictures of the French bourgeois, of a workman, soldier, and peasant, he described as gloomy, pessimistic, and calumnious caricatures.

Brunetière was a French critic of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. His articles in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" resemble a strongly framed building, without frivolous ornament, majestic in proportion, impressive through solidity. They have been published in about fifteen volumes bearing various titles, as: "Etudes critiques sur l'histoire de la littérature française"; "Questions de critique"; "Essais sur la littérature contemporaine", etc. Brunetière was a dogmatist, judging literay works not by the impression they made upon him, but according to certain principles he had laid down as criteria. According to his dogmatic system, literary work derives its value from the general ideas it contains, and the originality of a writer consists only in setting his own stamp upon a universal design. A good survey of his ideas may be had from the "Manuel de la littérature française" (tr. New York). This form of criticism was more or less borrowed from Désiré Nisard. About the year 1889, M. Brunetière changed his method and applied to literature the theories of evolution, explaining the formation, growth, and decay of various literary genres in their development from a common origin, by the same principles as those by which Darwin explained the development of the animal species. (L'évolution des genres; L'évolution de la poésie lyrique au XIXe siècle.) However weak the basis of such a system may be, all the details are interesting. In 1892 M. Brunetière showed himself a orator of the highest rank. His lectures at the Odéon théâtre on "Les époques du Theatre Francais" proved very successful. In 1893 he delivered a course of public lectures at the Sorbonne on "L'évolution des genres", and in 1894 on "Les sermons de Bossuet". When he was deprived of his professorship at the Ecole Normale, in 1905, he became ordinary lecturer to the Société des Conférences. M. Brunetière was master of the difficult art of convincing a large audience. He had all the qualities of a true orator: clearness of exposition, strength and logic of reasoning, an unusual command of general ideas, a fine and penetrating voice, and above all, a certain strange power of conviction which won the immediate sympathy of the most prejudiced hearers.

M. Brunetière became a convert to Catholicism, in consequence of long and thorough study of Bossuet's sermons, and, strange to say, by a logical process of deductions which had been suggested to him by Auguste Comte's philosophy. (See Discours de combat, 2d series, p. 3.) In giving up his materialistic opinions to adopt the Catholic Faith he was prompted by a deep conviction, and there was no emotional element in this radical change. The article he wrote in 1895, "Après une visite au Vatican", augured his conversion to catholicism. In this article, M. Brunetière showed that science, in spite of its solemn promises, had failed to give happiness to mankind, and that faith alone was able to achieve that result. Soon after, M. Brunetière publicly adhered to Catholicism and for ten years he made numerous speeches in all parts of France, to defend his new faith against the free-thinkers. Among these addresses may be mentioned: "Le besoin de croire", Besancon, 1898; "Les raisons actuelles de croire", Lille, 1899; "L'idée de solidarité", Toulouse, 1900; "L'action catholique", Tours, 1901; "Les motifs d'esperer", Lyons, 1901, etc. He devoted himself to this task with the greatest energy, for he was naturally a man of will and a fighter. The most interesting feature of his apology is his attempt to show how much the positivism of Auguste Comte was akin to Catholicism. He endeavoured to prove that modern thought contained in itself, without suspecting it, the seed of Catholicism. (see "Sur les chemins de la croyance. Primiere etape, L'utilisation du positivisme".) On one occasion, in the course of a discussion with a Socialist, he went so far as to infer the identity of the social aspirations of Catholicism and the aspirations of the Socialists for a general reform of the world.

Bibliography

• Dirk, Hoeges, Studien zur französischen Literaturkritik im 19.Jahrhundert. Taine - Brunetière - Hennequin - Guyau, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1980. ISBN 3-533-02857-7

Further reading

• Babbitt, Irving (1897). "Ferdinand Brunetière and his Critical Method," The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 79, No. 476, pp. 757–765.
• Bastide, Charles (1899). "M. Brunetière," The Fortnightly Review, Vol. 66, pp. 500–509.
• Blaze de Bury, Yetta (1895). "Ferdinand Brunetière," The Fortnightly Review, Vol. 64, pp. 497–511.
• Connolly, P.J. (1907). "Ferdinand Brunetière," The Dublin Review, Vol. CXLI, pp. 56–73.
• Guerlac, Othon (1907). "Ferdinand Brunetière," The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 6, pp. 323–329.
• Edgar, Pelham (1907). "Ferdinand Brunetière," The University Magazine, Vol. 6, pp. 107–116.
• Schinz, Albert (1907). "Ferdinand Brunetière (1849–1906)," Modern Language Notes, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 56–57.
• Wendell, Barrett & Louis Allard (1918). "Ferdinand Brunetière (1849–1900)," Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 53, No. 10, pp. 782–793.

External links

• Works by or about Ferdinand Brunetière at the Internet Archive
• Works by Ferdinand Brunetière at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Ferdinand Brunetière, at HathiTrust