View source for Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac

{{Short description|French writer of epistolary essays}}
{{Distinguish|Honoré de Balzac}}
[[File:Jean-louis guez de balzac.jpg|thumb|Guez de Balzac]]
{{French literature sidebar}}

'''Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac''' (31 May 1597<ref name=":0">''L'Amateur d'autographes'' edited by Étienne Charavay; p.33</ref> – 18 February 1654)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac {{!}} French Writer, Satirist, Poet {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Louis-Guez-de-Balzac |access-date=2025-08-18 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref> was a French [[author]] in Baroque [[Précieuses]] style, best known for his epistolary [[essay]]s, which were widely circulated and read in his day. He was one of the founding members of the {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]|italic=no}}.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.academie-francaise.fr/les-immortels/jean-louis-guez-de-balzac |title=Jean-Louis GUEZ de BALZAC |last= |first= |date= |website=Académie française |publisher= |access-date=2017-01-25 |quote=Elected a member of the Académie as of March, 1634. Around this time, he replied laughingly to letters he had been sent to by Chapelain and Boisrobert, to the effect that he should become a member of the Académie; he seems to have been enlisted without having been formally consulted; anyhow, he is little likely to have ever attended the assembly, as his health would compel him to stay in Angoumois, and he was exempted.}}</ref><ref name=":1" />

==Life and career==
Guez de Balzac was born at [[Angoulême]]. Originally thought to have been born in 1595, the date was revised in 1848 upon the discovery of a baptismal certificate dated June 1, 1597, although this is still controversial because his birth certificate contained several irregularities.<ref>Jean Jehasse ''Guez de Balzac et le Genie Romain 1597–1654'' p. 82, N34</ref><ref name=aa/>{{rp|31}} He was born in a well off [[bourgeois]] family, which also had acquired [[noble title]]s. In his youth, he studied at two [[Jesuit]] colleges in Angoulême and [[Poitiers]], where he learned Latin well, especially [[rhetoric]].<ref>Peter William Shoemaker, ''Powerful connections: the poetics of patronage in the age of Louis XIII'', University of Delaware Press, 2007, {{ISBN|0-87413-993-7}}, p. 59</ref>

In 1612, he met [[Théophile de Viau]] when de Viau's troupe visited Angoulême, and fled from home with the troupe.<ref name=aa>{{in lang|fr}} Antoine Adam, ''Théophile de Viau et la libre pensée française en 1620'', Slatkine, 2008, {{ISBN|2-05-102067-1}}</ref>{{rp|29}}<ref>H. Stanley Schwarz, ''An Outline History of French Literature'', READ BOOKS, 2007, {{ISBN|1-4067-4309-7}} p. 43</ref> The two traveled together with the troupe for some time, but when the troupe arrived at [[Leiden]], they enrolled as students at the [[Leiden University|city's university]] in May 1615,<ref name=":0" /> although it's possible that they visited the university in 1613 as well.

His letters to his acquaintances and to important courtiers gained him a great reputation. Compliments were showered on him, and he became an ''habitué'' of the literary salong of [[Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet|Catherine de Vivonne]], Marquise de Rambouillet at the [[Hôtel de Rambouillet]]. In 1624 a collection of his ''Lettres'' was published, and was received with great favour. From [[Chateau de Balzac]], where he had retired, he continued to correspond with [[Jean Chapelain]], [[Valentin Conrart]] and others.

In 1634 Balzac was elected to the {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]|italic=no}}. He died at [[Angoulême]] twenty years later.<ref name=":1" />

Guez de Balzac's fame rests chiefly upon the ''Lettres'', a second collection of which appeared in 1636. ''Recueil de nouvelles lettres'' was printed in the next year. His letters, though empty and affected in matter, show a real mastery of style, introducing a new clearness and precision into French [[prose]] and encouraging the development of the language on national lines by emphasizing its most idiomatic elements. Balzac has thus the credit of executing in French prose a reform parallel to [[François de Malherbe]]'s in verse. In 1631 he published a [[eulogy]] of King [[Louis XIII]] entitled ''Le Prince''; in 1652 the ''Socrate chrétien'', and ''Aristippe ou de la Cour'' in 1658.

Since 1962, his name is given to the [[:fr:Lycée Guez-de-Balzac|Lycée Guez-de-Balzac]] in [[Angoulême]] ([[Charente]], [[France]]).

==Notes==
{{Wikisource1911Enc|Balzac, Jean Louis Guez de}}
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac}}
* {{Librivox author |id=16741}}

{{Académie française Seat 28}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guez De Balzac, Jean Louis}}
[[Category:1597 births]]
[[Category:1654 deaths]]
[[Category:Writers from Angoulême]]
[[Category:Members of the Académie Française]]
[[Category:University of Poitiers alumni]]
[[Category:17th-century French writers]]
[[Category:17th-century French male writers]]
[[Category:French male essayists]]
[[Category:French historiographers]]
[[Category:French male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:People from the Angoumois]]