Ferdinand Brunetière

Born July 19, 1849, in Toulon; died Dec. 9, 1906, in Paris. French critic, historian, and literary theoretician.

Brunetière was an adherent of monarchy and Catholicism. Following H. Taine, he tried to bring the methods of the natural sciences, in particular the theory of C. Darwin, to bear on the history of literature (The Evolution of Genres in the History of Literature, 1890, and others). Later, in the 1890’s, Brunetière went over to an openly idealist position, explaining the literary process by the influence of one work on another, and finding the main reason for the change of literary directions and aesthetic tastes in the artistic aspirations of the creative personality (Textbook on the History of French Literature [1898] and History of French Literature of the Classical Period, vols. 1-2, 1904-12). A devotee of 17th-century French classicism, Brunetière viewed subsequent literary currents (naturalism and others) as phenomena of artistic decline.