Antoine de La Fosse (alias Sieur d'Aubigny; 1653 or 1658 – 2 November 1708)[1][2] Premier gentilhomme de la Chambre [fr],[3][4] was a French playwright who wrote four tragedies, and was the last French author of tragedies to make a name for himself at the end of the 17th century.[5][6][7]

François-Joseph Talma in Manlius Capitolinus at Comédie-Française, 1806

The son of a goldsmith and the nephew of painter Charles de La Fosse, Antoine served first as the secretary for the Envoy of France to Florence. La Fosse was then attached to Marquis Francois Joseph Créquy (1662–1702) who died in the Battle of Luzzara on 15 August 1702, before he became secretary for the 2nd Duke of Aumont Louis-Marie-Victor d'Aumont (1632–1704).[8]

La Fosse translated the odes of Anacreon to French (Traduction nouvelle des odes d'Anacreon, sur l'original grec) in 1704, and popular with contemporaries the second edition was published in 1706.[9] German classicist Johann Friedrich Christ [de] (1701–1756) praised the French verse translation.[10][11][12]

La Fosse's chef d'œuvre Manlius Capitolinus (1698) about Marcus Manlius Capitolinus (died 384 BCE), was imitated from the English dramatist Thomas Otway's play Venice Preserv'd, who in turn had taken his plot from César Vichard de Saint-Réal's Conjuration des Espagnols contre la République de Venise en l'Année M. DC. XVIII (1674).[13][14][15] La Fosse's later plays were not as successful, but according to theater historian Phyllis Hartnoll in The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, many of his contemporaries thought he might have rivalled Jean Racine had he began his dramatic career earlier.[16]

His collected plays were popular for more than a century and were re-published multiple times in the 18th and 19th century, e.g. in two quarto volumes in 1747 (Nouvelle edition - "new edition"), and in 1811 in two octavo volumes.[7][17][18][19]

Among his other works of elegies, odes, epigrams, poems, and cantatas is an ode written in Italian, a language he became fluent in while in Florence, which earned him a membership of Accademia degli Apatisti.[20][21]

La Fosse is interred in St-Gervais-et-St-Protais, Paris.[22]

Selected works

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  • Antoine de La Fosse (1747). Les oeuvres de Monsieur de La Fosse, nouvelle édition, revûe corrigée & augmentée de ses Poésies diverses. Tome premier. Compagnie des Libraires Associés.
  • Antoine de La Fosse (1747). Les oeuvres de Monsieur de La Fosse, nouvelle édition, revûe corrigée & augmentée de ses Poésies diverses. Tome second. Compagnie des Libraires Associés.

Plays

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  • Polyxène (premiere February 3, 1686)
  • Manlius Capitolinus (premiere January 18, 1698)
  • Thesée (premiere 5 January 1700)
  • Corésus Callirhoé (premiere December 7, 1703)

References

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  1. ^ Joseph Haydn; Benjamin Vincent (1869). Haydn's Universal Index of Biography from the Creation to the Present Time: For the Use of the Statesman, the Historian, and the Journalist. Virtue & Yorston. pp. 309–. La Fosse, Antoine de sieur d'Aubigny, French dramatist ; 4. about 1653; wrote "Polyxene," 1686 ; " Manlius Capitolinus," 1698 ; d. 2 Nov. 1708.
  2. ^ Antoine : d'Aubigny de La Fosse (1784). Chef-d'oeuvres de La Fosse (in French). au bureau de la Petite Bibliotheque des Theatres. pp. 11–.
  3. ^ Evrard Titon du Tillet (1732). Le parnasse françois ... (in French). de l'Imprimerie de Jean-Baptiste Coignard fils. pp. 512–. ANTOINE LA FOSSE, Parisien , l' Académie des Apatistes Florence 3 Secrétaire de M. le Marquis de Crequy , ft) depuis Secrétaire gênerai du Bou- lonnois q) de M. Louis Duc £ Aumont , premier Gentilhomme de la Chambre du Roi ..
  4. ^ Ludovic Marquis de Magny (1894). Recueil de généalogies de maisons nobles de France: extrait du Nobiliaire universel publié sous la directions de L. de Magny (in French). Vol. 2. A la direction des Archives de la Noblesse. pp. 22–. A cette famille appartenait Pierre DE LA FOSSE, conseiller du roi, auditeur en la chambre des comptes de Normandie en ... Antoine DE LA FOSSE, gentilhomme de la chambre du roi, né à Paris, en 1653 mort en 1708, à l'âge d'environ 55 ans ...
  5. ^ Hochman, Stanley (ed.). McGraw-Hill Encyclopaedia of World Drama (2 ed.). p. 205.
  6. ^ Lacy Lockert (1 January 1956). The Chief Rivals of Corneille and Racine. Vanderbilt University Press. pp. 467–. ISBN 978-0-8265-1047-1.
  7. ^ a b Henry Carrington Lancaster (1940). A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century: The pre-classical period, 1610–1634. 2 v. Johns Hopkins Press. pp. 385–.
  8. ^ Lafosse Otway, Saint-real (in French). Slatkine. pp. 217–.
  9. ^ Anacreon; Antoine de La Fosse (sieur d'Aubigny) (1706). Traduction nouvelle des odes d'Anacreon, sur l'original grec (in French). Chez Pierre Ribou.
  10. ^ Manuel Baumbach; Nicola Dümmler (1 April 2014). Imitate Anacreon!: Mimesis, Poiesis and the Poetic Inspiration in the Carmina Anacreontea. De Gruyter. pp. 181–. ISBN 978-3-11-033414-2. Mimesis, Poiesis and the Poetic Inspiration in the Carmina Anacreontea Manuel Baumbach, Nicola Dümmler ... laboured French verse translation by Antoine de la Fosse (Traduction nouvelle des odes d'Anacréon, Paris 1704), popular with ...
  11. ^ College Art Association of America. Meeting (1989). Abstracts and Program Statements. Vol. 77. College Art Association. pp. 178–. Coypel's choice of a bold active pose was dictated by Anacreon's Ode LI - "Venus Nageant gravee sur un Disque. ... Antoine de La Fosse, in his 1704 Traduction Nouvelle des Odes d 'Anacrion. also questioned Le Fevre's dislike of Ode LI: ...
  12. ^ Vilhelm Lundström (1977). Eranos: Acta philologica suecana. Vol. 74–76. Apud Editorem. pp. 80–. Antoine de La Fosse, a French tragedian who specialized in tragedies with themes from the ancient world, translated: Traduction nouvelle des Odes d'Anacréon, sur l'original grec, par M. de La Fosse, avec des remarques et d'autres ..
  13. ^ Konta, Annie Lemp (1910). The History of French Literature from the Oath of Strasburg to Chanticler. D. Appleton. pp. 266–. It has been said of him, that he was " curious like Froissart, penetrating like La Bruyere, and passionate like Alceste in Moliere. ... Antoine de Lafosse 's (about 1653–1708) tragedy Manlius Capitolinus, an adaptation of Thomas Otway's " Venice ...
  14. ^ Edmund Gosse (1913). Collected Essays of Edmund Gosse: Seventeenth century studies. William Heinemann. pp. 341–. Rotrou and Otway each wrote many dramas ; each produced one of great and another of supreme excellence ; the career of each was cut off in youth by calamity. ... the Manlius Capitolinus of Antoine de la Fosse, published in 1698, show the influence which Otway exercised abroad. ... He has no words sufficiently contemptuous for these clumsy inventions of le tendre Otway, in whom Thomas Otway
  15. ^ Claude-Jean Nébrac (7 March 2014). Chronique d'une année du règne de Louis-le-Grand: août 1697 – juillet 1698 (in French). BoD – Books on Demand. pp. 111–. ISBN 978-2-322-03551-9. C'est la deuxième pièce de cet auteur, Antoine de Lafosse d'Aubigny, dont la première, Polixène, avait tant plu au ... aussi que le plan de la pièce est imité de la Venise sauvée, pièce donnée en 1682 par le dramaturge anglais Thomas Otway.
  16. ^ Phyllis Hartnoll (1967). The Oxford companion to the theatre. Oxford U.P. pp. 544–. ISBN 978-0-19-211531-7.
  17. ^ Charles-Théodore Beauvais; Antoine-Alexandre Barbier (1829). Biographie universelle classique: ou, Dictionnaire historique portatif (in French). pp. 1609–.
  18. ^ Marie-Nicolas Bouillet (1863). Dictionnaire universel d'histoire et de géographie: contenant l'histoire proprement dite... (in French). L. Hachette et Cie. pp. 984–.
  19. ^ Johannes Thiemer (1906). Antoine de La Fosse, Sieur d'Aubigny als Tragiker (in German). Seele. pp. 36–. Von weiteren Gesamtausgaben ist vor allem die Pariser vom Jahre 1747 in 2 Bänden zu erwähnen, während in den ... sicher aber noch zu Lebzeiten des La Fosse hat der Abbe Pic in den Lettres sur les nouvelles Pieces de Theätre die ...
  20. ^ Antoine : d'Aubigny de La Fosse; Vincenzo Comaschi (1795). Biblioteca teatrale della nazione francese, ossia Raccolta de' più scelti componimenti tragici, comici, lirici e burleschi di quel teatro dall'origine de' suoi spettacoli fino a' nostri giorni, recata in italiano da una società di dotte persone, con prefazioni, giudizi critici, aneddoti, osservazioni, vite, ritratti in rame di varj illustri autori, ec: Capi d'opera di Antonio La-Fosse (in Italian). dalla tipografia Pepoliana. pp. 1–.
  21. ^ Samuel Orchart Beeton (1870). Beeton's Dictionary of Universal Biography: Being the Lives of Eminent Persons of All Times : with the Pronunciation of Every Name. Ward, Lock and Tyler. pp. 413–.
  22. ^ Jacques-Maximilien Benjamin Bins de Saint-Victor (1808). Tableau historique et pittoresque de Paris depuis les Gaulois jusqu'à nos jours. Chez H. Nicolle. pp. 568–.