Saint-Marc Girardin (22 February 1801 – 1 April 1873) was a French politician and man of letters, whose real name was Marc Girardin.
Biography
Girardin was born in Paris. After a brilliant university career in the city, he began in 1828 to contribute to the Journal des Débats, on the staff of which he remained for nearly half a century. After the July Revolution and the accession of Louis Philippe as King of the French (the liberalJuly Monarchy), he was appointed professor of history at the Sorbonne and master of requests in the Conseil d'État. Soon afterwards he exchanged his chair of history for one of poetry, continuing to contribute political articles to the Journal des Débats, and sitting as deputy in the Chamber from 1835 to 1848.
In 1833, he was charged with a mission to study Germanmethods of education, and issued a report advocating the necessity of newer methods and of technical instruction. In 1844 he was elected a member of the French Academy.
His chief work is his Cours de littérature dramatique (1843–1863), a series of lectures better described by its second title De l'usage des passions dans le drame. The author examined dramatic passions, discussing the mode in which they are treated in ancient and modern drama, poetry and romance. The book, a defence of the ancients against the moderns, "did not", according to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, "take into account the fact that only the best of ancient literature has come down to us." Girardin's oeuvre was, overall, very hostile toward Romanticism.
Girardin's other works included Essais de littérature (2 vols., 1844), made up chiefly of contributions to the Débats, his Notices sur l'Allemagne (1834), and many volumes of collected Souvenirs, Réflexions, etc., on foreign countries and passing events (including his notes on the period of Russian administration in the Danubian Principalities). His last major works were La Fontaine et les Fabulistes (1867) and an Étude sur J.-J. Rousseau (1870) which had appeared in the Revue des deux mondes.