Antoine Girard, sieur de Saint-Amant (September 30, 1594 – December 29, 1661), French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, was born near Rouen

Rouen

Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...

.

His father was a merchant who had, according to his son's account, been a sailor and had commanded for 22 years "une escadre de la reine Elizabeth"--a vague statement that lacks confirmation. The son obtained a patent of nobility, and attached himself to different great noblemen—the duc de Retz

Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz

Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz was a French churchman, writer of memoirs, and agitator in the Fronde....

 and the comte d'Harcourt among others. He saw military service and sojourned at different times in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

--a sojourn which provoked from him a violent poetical attack on the country, Albion (1643)--in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, where he held a court appointment for two years, and elsewhere. Saint-Amant's later years were spent in France; and he died at Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.

Saint-Amant has left a considerable body of poetry. His Albion and Rome ridicule set the fashion of the burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

 poem. In his later years he devoted himself to serious subjects and produced an epic, Moyse sauvé (1653). His best work consists of Bacchanalia

Bacchanalia

The bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Greco-Roman god Bacchus , the wine god. The term has since come to describe any form of drunken revelry.-History:...

n songs, his Débauche being one of the most remarkable convivial poems of its kind.