François Ponsard
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François Ponsard (1 June 1814 – 7 July 1867), was a French dramatist, poet and author and was a member of the Académie française.
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[edit] Biography
He was born at Vienne, Isère in 1814 and trained as a lawyer.
[edit] Literary career
His first literary work was a translation of Manfred (1837). His play, Lucrèce, was performed at the Thêatre Français on 1 April 1843. This date is notable in literature and dramatic history, because it marked a reaction against the romantic style of Alexandre Dumas, père and Victor Hugo.
Ponsard adopted the liberty of the romantics with regard to the unities of time and place, but reverted to the more sober style of earlier French drama. The tastes and capacities of the greatest tragic actress of the day, Rachel, suited his methods, and this contributed greatly to his own popularity.
He followed up Lucrèce with Agnès de Méranie (1846), Charlotte Corday (1850), and others. Ponsard accepted the Second French Empire with no very great enthusiasm, and was given the post of librarian to the senate; however, he soon resigned, and fought a bloodless duel with a journalist on the subject. L'Honneur et l'argent, one of his most successful plays, was acted in 1853, and he became an Academician in 1855.
For some years he was inactive, but in 1866 he repeated his earlier success with Le Lion amoureux, another play dealing with the revolutionary epoch. His Galilee, which excited great opposition in the clerical camp, was produced early in 1867.
His Œuvres completes were published in Paris (3 vols., 1865–1876).
[edit] Death
He died in Paris in 1867, soon after his nomination to the commandership of the Legion of Honor.
[edit] Place in French literature
Most of Ponsard's plays hold a certain steady level of literary and dramatic ability, but his popularity is in the main because his appearance coincided with a certain public weariness of the extravagant and unequal style of 1830.
[edit] Awards and honours
In 1845, Ponsard received the prize awarded by the Académie Française for a tragedy "to oppose a dike to the waves of romanticism."
In 1855 Ponsard became a member of the Académie Française.
| Preceded by Louis-Pierre-Marie-François Baour-Lormian |
Seat 9 Académie française 1855-1867 |
Succeeded by Joseph Autran |
[edit] References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
