François de Belleforest
Encyclopedia
François de Belleforest (Comminges
Comminges
The Comminges is an ancient region of southern France in the foothills of the Pyrenees, corresponding closely to the arrondissement of Saint-Gaudens in the department of Haute-Garonne...
, 1530 - 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...
, January 1, 1583) was a prolific 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...
author, poet and translator of the Renaissance
French Renaissance
French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...
. He was born in a poor family and his father (a soldier) was killed when he was seven. He spent some time in the court of Marguerite of Navarre
Marguerite de Navarre
Marguerite de Navarre , also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the queen consort of Henry II of Navarre...
, traveled to Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
and Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
(where he met George Buchanan
George Buchanan (humanist)
George Buchanan was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. He was part of the Monarchomach movement.-Early life:...
), and then to 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...
where he came into contact with members of the young literary generation, including Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...
, Jean Antoine de Baïf, Jean Dorat, Remy Belleau
Remy Belleau
Remy Belleau , was a poet of the French Renaissance. He is most known for his paradoxical poems of praise for simple things and his poems about precious stones....
, Antoine Du Verdier
Antoine du Verdier
Antoine du Verdier , lord of Vauprivast, was a French politician and writer. He was conseiller du roi and controller-general in Lyon, but is best known for his work as a bibliographer alongside his friend and contemporary François Grudé.-Publications:* Prosopographie, description des...
and Odet de Turnèbe
Odet de Turnèbe
Odet de Turnèbe was a French dramatist.-Biography:Son of the Greek scholar Adrien Turnèbe, Odet de Turnèbe received a solid education and was known, from an early age, for his intelligence and wit...
. In 1568 he became historiographer to the king.
Belleforest wrote on cosmography
Cosmography
Cosmography is the science that maps the general features of the universe, describing both heaven and Earth...
, morals, literature and history, and he translated the works of Matteo Bandello
Matteo Bandello
-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...
, Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
, Antonio de Guevara
Antonio de Guevara
Antonio de Guevara was a Spanish chronicler and moralist.Born in Treceño in the province of Cantabria, he passed some of his youth at the court of Isabella I of Castile. In 1528 he entered the Franciscan order, and afterwards accompanied Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, during his journeys to Italy...
, Francesco Guicciardini
Francesco Guicciardini
Francesco Guicciardini was an Italian historian and statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance...
, Polydore Vergil
Polydore Vergil
Polydore Vergil was an Italian historian, otherwise known as PV Castellensis. He is better known as the contemporary historian during the early Tudor dynasty. He was hired by King Henry VIII of England, who wanted to distance himself from his father Henry VII as much as possible, to document...
, Saint Cyprian, Sebastian Münster
Sebastian Münster
Sebastian Münster , was a German cartographer, cosmographer, and a Hebrew scholar.- Life :Münster was born at Ingelheim near Mainz, the son of Andreas Munster. He completed his studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 1518. His graduate adviser was Johannes Stöffler.He was appointed to...
, Achilles Tatius
Achilles Tatius
Achilles Tatius of Alexandria was a Roman era Greek writer whose fame is attached to his only surviving work, the ancient Greek novel or romance The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon.-Life and minor works:...
, Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
and Demosthenes
Demosthenes
Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...
into French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. He is also the author of the first French pastoral novel, La Pyrénée (or La Pastorale amoureuse) (1571) modeled on the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor
Jorge de Montemayor
Jorge de Montemayor was a Portuguese novelist and poet, who wrote almost exclusively in Spanish.-Biography:He was born at Montemor-o-Velho , whence he derived his name, the Spanish form of which is Montemayor....
. His Grandes Annales are a polemic tract against François Hotman
François Hotman
François Hotman was a French Protestant lawyer and writer, associated with the legal humanists and with the monarchomaques, who struggled against absolute monarchy. His first name is often written 'Francis' in English. His surname is Latinized by himself as Hotomanus, by others as Hotomannus and...
. His total output comprises more than 50 volumes.
His most successful work was most likely his translation and adaptation of the "histoires tragiques
Histoires tragiques
Histoires tragiques were a genre of French fiction in 16th-17th centuries, a Baroque rendering of Boccaccio's type of short stories, concentrating on the dark side of human nature....
" by the Italian Matteo Bandello
Matteo Bandello
-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...
, which built on the work of Pierre Boaistuau
Pierre Boaistuau
Pierre Boaistuau, also known as Pierre Launay or Sieur de Launay was a French humanist. 'Boaistuau' is the manner of spelling followed by the majority of secondary works in which he has been mentioned...
and eventually amounted to seven volumes (1564-1582). One of these tales might be the source for Shakespeare's Hamlet
Hamlet (legend)
Hamlet is a figure in Scandinavian romance and the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.The chief authority for the legend of Hamlet is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Gesta Danorum, completed at the beginning of the 13th century...
.
Selected works
- La chasse d'amour (poems), 1561.
- Continuation des histoires tragiques, contenant douze histoires tirées de Bandel...., translation of Matteo BandelloMatteo Bandello-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...
, 1559. - Histoires tragiques, translation of Matteo BandelloMatteo Bandello-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...
, 7 volumes, 1566-1583. - Les Amours de Clitophon et de Leucippe by Achilles TatiusAchilles TatiusAchilles Tatius of Alexandria was a Roman era Greek writer whose fame is attached to his only surviving work, the ancient Greek novel or romance The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon.-Life and minor works:...
, 1568. - La Pyrénée (or La Pastorale amoureuse), 1571.
- Harengue militaires, et concions de princes, capitaines, embassadeurs, et autres manians tant la guerre que les affaires d'Estat ... Recueillis et faictes Françoyses, by Françoys de Belle-Forest. Paris, Nicolas Chesneau, 1572
- La Cosmographie universelle de tout le monde. Paris, 1575. Nicolas Chesneau and Michel Sonnius. French translation of the Cosmographia of Sebastian MünsterSebastian MünsterSebastian Münster , was a German cartographer, cosmographer, and a Hebrew scholar.- Life :Münster was born at Ingelheim near Mainz, the son of Andreas Munster. He completed his studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 1518. His graduate adviser was Johannes Stöffler.He was appointed to...
. - Grandes Annales et histoire générale de France, 1579.
- Les sentences illustrés de M.T. Ciceron Et les apophthegmes, avec quelquel sentences de piete, recueillies de mesme Ciceron. Aveei les plus remarquables sentences tant de Terence... et de... Demosthene. Le tout Traduit nouvellement de Latin en Francais par Francois de Belle-forest, Commingeoiis. Reveu & corrige. Jacob Stoer, (Geneva): 1609.
- Les chroniques et annales de France, dès l'origine des François, & leur venue en Gaule. Pierre Chevalier, 1621. Last edition and the most complete of the Chroniques of Nicole Gilles, first published in 1525.
See also
Other major translators from his period:- Jacques AmyotJacques AmyotJacques Amyot , French Renaissance writer and translator, was born of poor parents, at Melun.He found his way to the University of Paris, where he supported himself by serving some of the richer students. He was nineteen when he became M.A. at Paris, and later he graduated doctor of civil law at...
- Claude Colet
- Jacques Gohory
- Nicolas de Herberay des EssartsNicolas de Herberay des EssartsNicolas de Herberay des Essarts , French translator, was born in Picardy.He served in the artillery, and at the expressed desire of Francis I he translated intoFrench the first eight books of Amadis de Gaula...