Abel-François Villemain (French pronunciation: [abɛl fʁɑ̃swa vilmɛ̃]; 9 June 1790 – 8 May 1870) was a French politician and writer.
Biography
Villemain was born in Paris and educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He became assistant master at the Lycée Charlemagne, and subsequently at the École Normale. In 1812 he gained a prize from the academy with an essay on Michel de Montaigne. Under the restoration he was appointed, first, assistant professor of modern history, and then professor of French eloquence at the Sorbonne. Here he delivered a series of literary lectures which had an extraordinary effect on his younger contemporaries.
Villemain had the great advantage of coming just before the Romantic movement, of having a wide love of literature without being an extremist. Most of the clever young men of the brilliant generation of 1830 passed under his influence; and, while he pleased the Romanticists by his frank appreciation of the beauties of English, German, Italian, and Spanish poetry, he did not decry the classics—either the classics proper of Greece and Rome or the so-called classics of France.
In 1819 he published a book on Oliver Cromwell, and two years later he was elected to the academy. Villemain was appointed by the restoration government Chef de l'imprimerie et de la librairie, a post involving a kind of irregular censorship of the press, and afterwards to the office of master of requests. Before the July Revolution he had been deprived of his office for his liberal tendencies, and was elected deputy for Évreux in July 1830. Under Louis-Philippe he was made a Peer of France in 1832. He was a member of the council of public instruction, and was twice minister of that department, and he also became secretary of the academy. During the whole of the July Monarchy he was one of the chief dispensers of literary patronage in France, but in his later years his reputation declined. He died in Paris.
His wit was legendary; an anecdote has a fellow professor saying to him "I have discovered a gallicism in Cicero." The professor had been a revolutionary during the revolution, a follower of Napoleon during the Empire and a royalist during the restauration. Villemain answered quickly to him: "I found one too: «Quantae infidelitates! Quot amicorum fugae!»"
Villemain's chief work is his Cours de la littérature française (5 vols., 1828–1829). Among his other works are: Tableau de la littérature au Moyen Âge (2 vols., 1846); Tableau de la littérature au XVIII siècle (4 vols., 1864); Souvenirs contemporains (2 vols., 1856); Histoire de Grégoire VII (2 vols., 1873; Engl. trans., 1874).
Lautréamont assessed him thus: "Villemain is thirty-four times more intelligent than Eugène Sue and Frédéric Soulié. His preface to the Dictionary of the Academy will outlive the novels of Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper, and all the novels conceivable and imaginable."
Among notices on Villemain may be cited that of Louis de Loménie (1841), E. Mirecourt (1858), J.L. Dubut (1875). See also Sainte-Beuve, Portraits (1841, vol. iii), and Causeries du lundi (vol. xi, "Notes et pensées").
References
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One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Villemain, Abel François". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 80.
- "Review of Histoire de Cromwell, d'après les Mémoires du Temps, et les Recueils Parlementaires par M. Villemain ..." The Quarterly Review. 25: 279–347. July 1821.
- Raitt, Alan William (1998). The Process of Art: Essays on Nineteenth-century French Literature, Music and Painting in Honour of Alan Raitt. Clarendon Press. p. 34.
| Second cabinet of Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult (12 May 1839 to 1 March 1840) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Head of state: King Louis Philippe I | ||
| President of the council | Nicolas Soult | .svg) .JPG) Nicolas Soult |
| Foreign Affairs | Nicolas Soult | |
| Interior | Tanneguy Duchâtel | |
| Justice and Religious Affairs | Jean-Baptiste Teste | |
| War | Antoine Virgile Schneider | |
| Finance | Hippolyte Passy | |
| Navy and Colonies | Guy-Victor Duperré | |
| Public Education | Abel-François Villemain | |
| Public Works | Jules Armand Dufaure | |
| Agriculture and Commerce | Laurent Cunin-Gridaine | |
| Third cabinet of Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult (29 October 1840 to 19 September 1847) | ||
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| Head of state: King Louis Philippe I | ||
| President of the council | Nicolas Soult | Nicolas Soult |
| War |
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| Interior |
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| Justice and Religious Affairs | ||
| Foreign Affairs | François Guizot | |
| Finance | ||
| Navy and Colonies |
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| Public Education | ||
| Public Works | ||
| Agriculture and Commerce | Laurent Cunin-Gridaine | |
| Académie française seat 17 | |
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- 1790 births
- 1870 deaths
- Writers from Paris
- Politicians from Paris
- Doctrinaires
- Orléanists
- Ministers of national education of France
- Members of the 1st Chamber of Deputies of the July Monarchy
- Members of the Chamber of Peers of the July Monarchy
- Philhellenes
- French male writers
- Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni
- Academic staff of the University of Paris
- Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
- Members of the Académie Française