Editing Jean Chapelain (section)

==Author==
His first published work was a preface for the ''Adone'' of [[Giambattista Marino]], who printed and published that notorious poem at Paris. It was followed by a translation of [[Mateo Alemán]]'s novel, ''[[Guzmán de Alfarache]]'' and by four extremely indifferent odes, one of them addressed to [[Cardinal Richelieu]].<ref name=EB1911/>

In a conversation with Richelieu in about 1632, reported by the [[Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d'Olivet|abbé d'Olivet]], Chapelain maintained the importance of maintaining the unities of time, place and action, and it is explicitly stated that the doctrine was new to the cardinal and to the poets who were in his pay. Rewarded with a pension of a thousand crowns and from the first an active member of the newly constituted Academy, Chapelain drew up the plan of the grammar and dictionary, the compilation of which was to be a principal function of the young institution, and at Richelieu's command drew up the ''Sentiments de l’Académie sur le Cid''.<ref name=EB1911/>

The credit of introducing the law of the dramatic unities into [[French literature]] has been claimed for many writers, and especially for the [[François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac|Abbé d'Aubignac]], whose ''Pratique du théâtre'' appeared in 1657. [[Aristotle]]'s theory had of course been enunciated in the ''Art poétique'' of [[Julius Caesar Scaliger]] in 1561, and subsequently by other writers, but undoubtedly it was the action of Chapelain that transferred it from the region of theory to that of actual practice.<ref name=EB1911/> In 1656 he published, in a magnificent format, the first twelve cantos of his celebrated epic on [[Joan of Arc]], ''La Pucelle'', on which he had been working for twenty years. Six editions of the poem were disposed of in eighteen months. This was the end of the poetic reputation of Chapelain, "the legist of Parnassus." Later the slashing satire of [[Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux]] resulted in Chapelain ("''Le plus grand poète Français qu'ait jamais été et du plus solide jugement''," as he is called in Colbert's list) taking his place among the failures of modern art.<ref name=EB1911/>