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[English Version] Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de (eigentlich Antoine-Marie Roger Graf v. S.-E.; 29.6.1900 Lyon – 31.7.1944 über dem Mittelmeer vermißt, wahrscheinlich abgeschossen), franz. Pilot und Autor. S.-E.s Leben als weltweit u.a. für die Alliierten arbeitender Pionier der Zivil- und Militärluftfahrt war Ausgangsmaterial für sein lit. Werk: Romane (Courrier Sud, 1929; Vol de nuit, 1931; Pilote de guerre, 1942) und zunehmend von philos. Reflexionen durchsetzte Berichte und Erzählungen (Terre des hom…

[English Version] Rabelais, François (um 1494? la Devinière bei Chinon – 9.4.1553 Paris), franz. Humanist. Sein Leben als Geistlicher – Franziskaner, Benediktiner, dann Weltgeistlicher –, Schriftsteller und Arzt führte ihn u.a. nach Lyon, Montpellier, Paris, Rom und Turin. Trotz schärfster Kritik u.a. durch Calvin und die Theologen der Sorbonne (1546 Flucht nach Metz wegen Anklage der Häresie) wurde R. zeitlebens durch weltl. und kirchl. Gönner wie Kardinal Jean du Bellay und Papst Paul III. unters…

[German Version] (Feb 12, 1821, Rouen, France – May 8, 1880, Croisset, France). Active as a writer from his early youth, Flaubert mostly lived a withdrawn life in Croisset, but made extensive trips to Italy, Greece, and North Africa among other places. With his precise studies of manners and close attention to detail, Flaubert has developed into one of the leading novelists of realism (IV) since Madame Bovary (1856), although the romantic tone of his early works permeates all of his novels (the dream world of Emma Bovary; historicizing exoticism in Salammbô, 1862). At least formally, …

[German Version] (in full Antoine-Marie Roger, Comte de Saint-Exupéry; Jun 29, 1900, Lyon – Jul 31, 1944 missing over the Mediterranean, probably shot down), French aviator and author. Saint-Exupéry’s life as a worldwide pioneer of civil and military aviation, including working for the Allies, provided the raw material for his literary work: novels ( Courrier Sud, 1929; ET: Southern Mail, 1933; Vol de nuit, 1931; ET: Night Flight, 1932; Pilote de guerre, 1942: ET: Flight to Arras, 1942) as well as reports and stories increasingly interspersed with philosophical reflections ( Terre de…

[German Version] (c. 1494?, La Devinière, near Chinon – Apr 9, 1553, Paris), French Humanist. His life as a clergyman – Franciscan, Benedictine, finally a secular priest –, writer, and physician took him to Lyon, Montpellier, Paris, Rome, and Turin. Despite severe criticism by many, including Calvin and the Sorbonne theologians (escape to Metz in 1546 to evade charges of heresy), throughout his lifetime he found support from secular and ecclesiastical patrons like Cardinal Jean du Bellay and Pope …

[German Version] (Feb 5, 1848, Paris – May 12, 1907, Paris), French author, initially wrote naturalist works ( En Ménage, 1881) as a student of E.Zola, but, with the novel A Rebours (1884), which celebrates excessive artificiality, became the precursor of decadent aestheticism. In contrast to the empty materialism of the fin de siècle, Huysmans developed a spiritualist naturalism influenced by M. Grünewald, and turned to occultism ( Là-bas, 1891) and mystical Catholicism (1891 conversion). His late works are profoundly religious in theme and aesthetics, but thei…

[German Version] (Victor-Marie; Feb 26, 1802, Besançon – May 22, 1885, Paris). The writer Victor Hugo was the most important representative of French Romanticism. His father was a republican general under Napoleon I Bonaparte, his mother a royalist; Hugo changed from a Catholic royalist into a liberalist and left-wing revolutionary (cf. the political and stylistic vacillation of his early Odes et ballades, 1826–1828). His criticism of Napoleon III ( Napoléon-le-Petit, 1851; Les châtiments, 1853) forced him into exile in Guernsey. In 1870, when the republic had been …