Jean de La Bruyère
Jean de La Bruyère was a French philosopher and writer, best known for his work "Les Caractères," which offers a keen observation of human nature and society during the reign of Louis XIV. Born into a modest bourgeois family, he received his education at the University of Orléans and later worked as a tutor and secretary at the court in Chantilly. La Bruyère's writing reflects the complexities of 17th-century French society, marked by social hierarchy, religious severity, and an emerging literary culture.
His only major work, "Les Caractères," is a compilation of remarks that delve into various themes such as love, social idiosyncrasies, and the moral landscape of his time. La Bruyère’s style is characterized by precise and chiseled observations, often presented as portraits that blend anecdote and dialogue. His critical perspective on ambition and deception resonated with readers, earning him both acclaim and criticism. Recognized for his contributions to literature, he became a member of the Académie Française in 1693. Overall, La Bruyère's insights into character and society continue to be significant in understanding the cultural dynamics of his era.
Jean de La Bruyère
French essayist
- Born: August 16, 1645
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Died: May 10, 1696
- Place of death: Versailles, France
La Bruyère wrote Les Caractères: Ou, Les Moeurs de ce siècle, which documented the sentiments, manners, hypocrisy, idiosyncrasies, characteristics, and traits of French society and culture during the last years of the reign of King Louis XIV.
Early Life
Jean de la Bruyère (zhahn deh lah bree-yehr) was born into a modest bourgeois family. Educated at the University of Orléans, he was admitted to the bar in Paris in 1665. In 1673, he bought a post in the revenue department at Caen, which provided him with the status of nobility and with a certain income, but he sold the office in 1687. A lonely, meditative man from a middle-class family who tutored Louis, the duke of Bourbon, he stayed on at court in Chantilly after the tutorship ended, where he continued to observe the world of courtiers. When his pupil married, he was kept on as secretary and librarian of Chantilly, but was treated as a servant and made to feel insignificant.
Life’s Work
Les Caractères: Ou, Les Moeurs de ce siècle was the only work written by La Bruyère. Nine editions were published during his lifetime, with many more published since. Social historians often use 1685—three years before the publication of Les Caractères—as a convenient date for “the beginning of the end” of the seventeenth century. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, an edict that granted Protestants’ limited freedom of religion symbolized the second half of the reign of King Louis XIV , marked by costly and unsuccessful military campaigns, financial crises and destitution, and an aura of religious severity at court.
An administrative and financial hierarchy was emerging. The literary public made up a small part of the upper echelon of society. In the early years of the century, those interested in discussing literary and intellectual matters gathered at houses of socially prominent women, gatherings that were later called salons. The social revolution worked toward refinement, so that aesthetic pleasure came to result from the avoidance of excess. At the same time, works of the period contained frequent allusions to the contemporaneous social and political situation.
La Bruyère’s sharp vision of French society set him in a major literary tradition in which he commented on humankind as an explicit subject. His portraits brought him many readers as well as many enemies. Les Caractères, as a whole, is a compilation of remarks, and its themes are historical and part of the social commentary of the time: love, women, the powers of deception, the court, religious hypocrisy, and social idiosyncrasies. A second group of themes deals with merit, wealth, favor, infirmity, and death.
The word caractère is ambiguous, for it can refer to personal psychology, force of character, moral fiber, characteristics, character types, or social role. La Bruyère often used it to designate two meanings at once, that is, dealing with different but related usages on different levels. Various concrete and specific, observed details were accumulated in series, creating choppy sentences that are nevertheless precise and finely chiseled. The presentation of the portraits varies from anecdote to dialogue, and his frequent use of the pronoun “I” predominates. He used metaphor and an oratorical presentation to create a viewpoint from which to criticize and judge. La Bruyère perceived and projected a vision of the relationship between humans and their social and concrete surroundings. Each subsequent edition of his work contained details and realistic observation of men and women attached to appearances as a means of achieving status and prestige, viewed by La Bruyère as self-serving. His subjects are composites of types and social groups.
Significance
La Bruyère’s depiction of French society during the reign of Louis XIV and his commentary on the traits of ambition, pride, and sentimentality in France during the period of Louis’s reign earned him a place in the Académie Française, to which he was elected in 1693. As a moralist, he was concerned with analysis of character: morals, manners, customs, and sentiment. His caractères tended toward abstraction, and many stand alone as commentaries on behavior without any personalized reference.
La Bruyère’s Major Works
1688
- Les Caractères: Ou, Les Moeurs de ce siècle (The Characters: Or, The Manners of the Age, 1699)
1688
- Les Caractères de Théophraste (translation of Theophrastus’s essays)
1693
- Discours de réception à l Académie française (M. Bruyère’s Speech upon His Admission into the French Academy, 1713)
1699
- Dialogues posthumes du Sieur de La Bruyère sur le quiétisme
Bibliography
Fowlie, Wallace. French Literature: Its History and Its Meaning. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973. A classic text containing a concise survey of French literature.
Harth, Erica. Ideology and Culture in Seventeenth Century France. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983. Considers the manner in which ideology dictated French society and culture in the seventeenth century.
Knox, Edward C. Jean de La Bruyère. New York: Twayne, 1973. A detailed study of the work of La Bruyère, including historical and literary references.