Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688–1763) was a French novelist, essayist, playwright, and journalist whose comedies became the most frequently performed plays in French theatre after those of Molière.
Born in Paris, Marivaux published L’Homère travesti ou L’Iliade en vers burlesques (“Homer Burlesqued,”) a burlesque of Homer’s Iliad, in 1716, and from then on wrote several comedies, of which his best is Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (1730; The Game of Love and Chance, 1907.)
Marivaux’s best-known novel, La Vie de Marianne (first section published 1731; The Life of Marianne,) was never finished. His other romance novels Pharsamon ou Les Folies romanesques (1737; Pharsamond, or the New Knight-Errand, 1750) and Le Paysan parvenu (1735; The Upstart Peasant, 1950) are less popular.
Marivaux’s plays are characterized by a noticeably paradoxical and sensitive style later identified “marivaudage.” His complex and eminently personal style hinted the ongoing transition in France from 17th-century neoclassic art to an introspective art—characterized by individual sentiment and experience. Hence, Marivaux is regarded as an essential link between Enlightenment and Romanticism.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Pierre de Marivaux
There seems to me a thousand occasions when my soul knows more than it can tell, and a has a spirit of it’s own which is far superior to my everyday one. It seems to me too, that men are far superior to all the books they write.
—Pierre de Marivaux
In this world, you must be a bit too kind to be kind enough.
—Pierre de Marivaux
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