François de Malherbe - Caen, France - Dead Poets' Society Memorials on Waymarking.com

François de Malherbe (1555 near Caen - 16 October 1628) was a French poet from a noble family. He entered into a relationship at the age of 19 with Henri d'Angoulême, a great French prior and an illegitimate son of King Henry II. Malherbe was a member of the French Catholic League before marrying the daughter of a French Speaker of Parliament and settling in Aix-en-Provence in southern France. In 1585 he was recalled to Paris and received board and lodging from Henry IV and Maria de' Medici. A year later, Malherbe's father-in-law died, leaving his position at court uncertain. In 1586 Malherbe returned to his native Normandy.

Malherbe had done secretarial work with the Duke of Angoulême, but he considered poetry to be his primary vocation. He was a true language purist and saw it as his life's task to purify the French language as much as possible from foreign elements and to refine it on a number of points. He is therefore considered one of the first theorists of classicism and one of the most important reformers of the French language. Malherbe's work was republished many times, especially during the period of the ancien régime.

In particular, Malherbe criticized Mannerism and the Baroque which had characterized the work of the French poets of the previous century, in particular that of Philippe Desportes. Among his contemporary colleagues, Malherbe had many admirers such as Nicolas Boileau, who used the hemistiche Enfin Malherbe vint... as a standard salutation in his own work. By others such as Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, he was seen as an obsessive language purist.

Malherbe had one son, Marc-Antoine. He was killed in Cadenet in 1627 during a duel with Count Paul de Fortia de Piles. Malherbe asked Louis XIII and Richelieu, who had already protected his son, for atonement. He himself died 15 months later.

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