Comte d'Ételan, Works.
Edited by Paul Scott.

MHRA Critical Texts Vol. 32
ISBN 978-1-907322-40-2
Summer 2013
Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99

Illustration for Etelan edition

Publishing Ételan's extant works for the first time, Scott's edition will provide the most complete biography of this satirical poet of Louis XIII’s reign who was was close friends with the chronicler Tallemant des Réaux, and on intimate terms with the marquise de Sablé.

Coming from a well-connected family, Ételan took the extremely unusual step of taking Holy Orders even though he was the eldest son and heir. While the reasons for this are unclear, piety may be excluded as a cause: he was famed for his dissolute lifetime even by the standard of contemporary ecclesiastics. He held out explicit and unabashed ambitions for the bishopric of Bordeaux which seemed likely to be granted to him until his uncle, the maréchal de Bassompiere, was imprisoned in the Bastille in 1631. Despite this high-profile familial disgrace ruining his personal ambitions, Ételan remained fiercely loyal to his uncle and often visited him, thus compromising his own reputation with Richelieu’s ministry. His uncle was released a few months following the death of Richelieu and the see of Bordeaux was once again within his grasp as the family returned to the public eye; unfortunately within a few months Ételan’s life was cut short at the age of thirty-nine years old as he raced to Paris on horseback on hearing the news of his father’s death. In a sense he lived as he died: fast-paced and dangerously.

Paul Scott is associate professor in the Department of French & Italian at the University of Kansas.

Comte d'Ételan, Works. Edited by Paul Scott.

Further Information:

Comte d'Ételan, Works.
Edited by Paul Scott.