Curated category
French male poets
- Voltaire"This is no time to make new enemies." Those words are attributed to Voltaire on his deathbed, when a priest urged him to renounce Satan.
- Jules VerneJules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo died on the 22nd of May 1885, at 50 Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. He was 83 years old, and he died of pneumonia.
- Benoît de Sainte-MaureBenoît de Sainte-Maure died in 1173, leaving behind a poem so vast it runs to 40,000 lines. That poem, Le Roman de Troie, retold the fall of Troy for a…
- Nicholas Bourbon (the elder)Nicholas Bourbon the elder arrived in England in 1535 carrying a debt he could not repay with money. The French poet and teacher had spent years imprisoned…
- Jean CocteauJean Cocteau called himself a poet, and only a poet, even after he had written novels, staged plays, drawn erotica, and directed films that critics still…
- Dudo of Saint-QuentinDudo of Saint-Quentin was born in the 960s in the very town that would give him his name, a Picard scholar who became the first historian of the Normans.
- François RabelaisFrançois Rabelais died in Paris in 1553, leaving behind four books that the Sorbonne had condemned, a fifth whose authorship scholars still argue over, and a…
- Joachim du BellayJoachim du Bellay was born around 1522 in a castle called La Turmelière, near the town of Liré, not far from Angers. He died on the 1st of January 1560, at…
- Lancelot de CarleLancelot de Carle entered the world around 1508 in Bordeaux, France. His father Jean de Carle served as a lawyer and second president of the Parlement…
- Raymond QueneauRaymond Queneau once calculated that a reader working through his book A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, around the clock every day without stopping, would…
- Pierre de RonsardPierre de Ronsard was born on the 11th of September 1524 at the Manoir de la Possonnière, a country estate in the village of Couture-sur-Loir, in the…
- Yves BonnefoyYves Bonnefoy was born on the 24th of June 1923 in Tours, and by the time he died in Paris on the 1st of July 2016, the Encyclopaedia Britannica had called…