View source for Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset

{{Short description|French poet and dramatist (1709–1777)}}
[[Image:Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset.jpeg|right|200px]]

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'''Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset''' (August 29, 1709 – June 16, 1777) was a French [[poet]] and [[dramatist]], best known for his poem ''Vert-Vert''.

==Life==
Gresset was born at [[Amiens]]. During the last twenty-five years of his life, he regretted the frivolity of his youth, which enabled him to produce his most famous poem. He was brought up by the [[Jesuit]]s of Amiens. Accepted as a novice at the age of seventeen, he was sent to study at the [[Lycée Louis-le-Grand|Collège Louis le Grand]] in [[Paris]]. After completing his course he was appointed, at the age of nineteen, to a post as assistant master in a college at [[Rouen]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

Gresset published ''Vert-Vert'' at Rouen in 1734. It is the humorous story of a parrot, the delight of a convent whose talk was all of prayers and pious ambitions, and how it was conveyed to another convent as a visitor to please the [[nun]]s. On the way it falls among bad companions, forgets its convent language, and shocks the sisters on arrival by profane swearing. It is sent back in disgrace, punished by solitude and plain bread, repents, reforms and is finally killed by kindness. The treatment of the subject, the atmosphere which surrounds it, and the delicacy with which the little prattling ways of the nuns, their jealousies and trifling concerns, are presented, takes the reader entirely by surprise. The poem stands absolutely unrivalled, even among French ''contes en vers''.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

Gresset, now famous, left Rouen for Paris, where he found refuge in the same garret which had sheltered him when a boy at the Collège Louis le Grand, and there wrote his second poem, ''La Chartreuse''. It was followed by the ''Carême impromptu'', the ''Lutrin vivant'' and ''Les Ombres''. Soon, complaints were made to the fathers of the alleged licentiousness of his verses, the real cause of complaint being the ridicule which ''Vert-Vert'' seemed to throw upon the religious community and the anti-clerical tendency of the other poems.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} Gresset was transferred to the Jesuit school of [[La Flèche]], and soon after (30 September 1735) left the Order, without having been ordained priest. Gresset, who had never been taught to stand alone, was devastated: he wrote a moving ''Adieux aux Jésuites''.

[[File:Signature de Jean-Baptiste Gresset.jpg|center|150px]]

He went to Paris in 1740 and there produced ''Edouard III'', a tragedy (1740) and ''Sidnei'' (1745), a comedy. These were followed by ''[[Le Méchant]]'' which was qualified by [[Ferdinand Brunetière]] as the best verse [[comedy]] of the French 18th century theatre, even surpassing the ''Métromanie'' of [[Alexis Piron]]. Gresset was admitted to the [[Académie française]] in 1748.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} After his marriage, in 1751, to the daughter of a former mayor of Amiens, he withdrew to that city, where he carried on his literary activities through the 'Académie d'Amiens' which he had founded. However, going through a moral crisis and religious awakening he disowned the more frivolous writings of the past.

He died at Amiens on the 16 June 1777.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

== Works ==
*1734: ''[[Vert-Vert]], histoire d’un perroquet de Nevers''
*1734: ''Le Carème impromptu''
*1734: ''Le Lutrin vivant''
*1734: ''La Chartreuse''
*1734: ''Ombres''
*1740: ''Édouard III'', tragedy, 22 January
*1745: ''Sidney'', drame en vers, 3 May
*1747: ''[[Le Méchant]]'', comédie en 5 actes, en vers, 15 April
*1810: ''Le Parrain magnifique'', poème en dix chants
* ''Correspondance avec Frédéric le Grand''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://friedrich.uni-trier.de/oeuvres/20/ |title=Œuvres de Frédéric le Grand - Werke Friedrichs des Großen|publisher=Universitätsbibliothek Trier }}</ref>

== Bibliography ==
* Louis-Nicolas de Cayrol, ''Essai historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de Gresset'', Amiens, 1844
* J. Wogue, ''Jean-Baptiste Gresset; sa vie et ses œuvres'', Paris, 1894
* P.G. Salazar, ''Le Théâtre de Gresset : reflet d'une époque'', thèse de doctorat, Paris, 1977
* S. Lenel, ''Voltaire et Gresset'', Paris, 1889 ; éd. Nabu Press, 2010

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*{{EB1911|wstitle = Gresset, Jean Baptiste Louis|volume=12|page=583}}
*{{CathEncy|wstitle=Jean Baptiste Gresset}}
*{{cite EB9|wstitle=Jean Baptiste Gresset}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
*[http://friedrich.uni-trier.de/oeuvres/20/ Correspondence with Frederick the Great]
*Mircea Platon,  [https://web.archive.org/web/20111022130105/http://fh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/10/06/fh.crr058.abstract Physiocracy, Patriotism and Reform Catholicism in Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset’s Anti-Philosophe Enlightenment], in French History, October 2011 
*Mircea Platon, [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17496977.2010.525908 Robespierre's Éloge De Gresset: Sources of Robespierre's Anti‐Philosophe Discourse], in Intellectual History Review, Volume 20, Issue 4, 2010

{{Académie française Seat 5}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gresset, Jean-Baptiste-Louis}}
[[Category:French humorous poets]]
[[Category:1709 births]]
[[Category:1777 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Amiens]]
[[Category:18th-century French poets]]
[[Category:18th-century French male writers]]
[[Category:18th-century French dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:Former Jesuits]]
[[Category:Members of the Académie Française]]
[[Category:Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni]]
[[Category:French Jesuits]]