Auguste Barbier: Sa Vie et son oeuvre

Abstract

The thesis constitutes a study of the life and work of the French poet, Henry-Augustd Barbier, (1805-1882, ) examined in their relations to each other and to the age in which the writer lived. After a preliminary chapter on the family and home life of Barbier, his education, his training as a student of law, and his first introduction t4 literary circles, the lambes. (1832,) his greatest, and first published work of any importance, have been studied in detail. Their influence left the age has been emphasised, their literary importance revealed. This is the high point of Barbier's career. Coming does so early in his life, an attempt has been made to throw into sharp contrast the increasing mediocrity of the works which follow. Two volumes of verse, II Pianto, (l833,) Lazare,(1837,) inspired by visits to Italy and England respectively, claimed considerable attention and the question of Italian and English influences generally on the young poet proved a fruitful field of research. After 1840 Barbier's life is rarely relieved from the monotony of the bourgeois ease his increased fortune now permits; and though the works which follow Lazare are numerous, rarely has the genius and enthusiasm of the poet's youth revealed itself afresh. Almost all literary genres are represented in thisi^ later work, poems, short stories, travel, literary and artistic criticism, memoirs, translations^ moral observations. Much of his work was published in his lifetime much also remained for posthumous publication by the poet's literary executors.