Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin (1804 - 1869)

Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin (1804 - 1869).

French literary critic and author, successively influenced in his thought by scientific skepticism, physiology and Positivism, Romanticism, Saint-Simonism, liberal Catholicism, Swiss Calvinism, and other intellectual movements of his time. His criticism is sometimes divided into three periods: one, in which he was the spokesman for the romantic school; the second, in which he developed his biographical and psychological approach, studying a literary work through the life and personality of its author; and a third, in which he emphasized historical background and social environment in his studies in a method similar to that of Naturalism in the novel. His standards of judgment are taste, truth in the portrayal of life, moderation, and artistic unity.

Sainte-Beuve's works include Vie, Poésies, et Pensées de Joseph Delorme ( The Life, Poetry, and Thought of Joseph Delorme; 1829), an autobiographical work, morbid in tone; Consolations ( 1831); Pensées d'Aôut ( 1837); Le Livre d'Amour ( 1843); Volupté ( 1834), an autobiographical novel in the romantic vein, ending in a conversion of the hero to religion; Tableau de la Poésie Française au XIVe Siècle ( 1828); Port-Royal ( 1840-1860), a study of the Jansenists; Chateaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire; Causeries du Lundi ( 1851-1862) and Nouveaux Lundis ( 1863-1870), weekly critical articles; Portraits Littéraires ( 18621864); Portraits Contemporains ( 1869-1871).

Sainte-Beuve had a reputation for extreme variability in his friendships, personal loyalties, and intellectual affiliations. Le Livre d'Amour celebrates with great frankness the critic's early love-affair with the wife of Victor Hugo and aroused a great deal of scandal on its publication.