Cambridge Encyclopedia :: Cambridge Encyclopedia Vol. 39

Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian

Writer, born in Sauve, S France. He joined the court of the Penthièvres at Anet, then at Sceaux. Grand-nephew of Voltaire, he was a fabulist songwriter. His works include five books of Fables (1792), a novel, Gonzalve de Cordoue (1792), and the plays Le Bon ménage and Les Jumeaux de Bergame (1782).

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Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (March 6, 1755 château of Florian, near Sauve – September 13, 1794) was a French poet and romance writer.

His mother, a Spanish lady named Gilette de Salgues, died when he was a child.

Florian's first literary efforts were comedies;

In 1788 he became a member of the French Academy, and published Estelle, a pastoral of the same class as Galatie. Among his posthumous works are La Jeunesse de Florian, ou Mémoires d'un Jeune Espagnol (1807), and an abridgment (1809) of Don Quixote, which, though far from being a correct representation of the original, had great and merited success.

Florian imitated Salomon Gessner, the Swiss idyllist, and his style has all the artificial delicacy and sentimentality of the Gessnerian school.

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