author
L. (Louis) Becq de Fouquières
1831–1887
A lively 19th-century French man of letters, he moved from a military path into literature and became known for scholarship that ranged from poetry and versification to ancient games and the art of stagecraft.
1 Audiobook
L'art de la mise en scène: Essai d'esthétique théâtrale
by L. (Louis) Becq de Fouquières
About the author
Born in Paris in 1831, Louis Becq de Fouquières left a military career behind and turned to literary work. He made his name through critical editions of André Chénier and through anthologies of French Renaissance poets, building a reputation as a careful reader and editor with wide-ranging interests.
His writing was notably varied. Alongside studies of poets such as Ronsard, Malherbe, Baïf, and Du Bellay, he wrote on French versification, diction and reading aloud, classical antiquity, and theatre. That mix of scholarship and practical curiosity gives his work an appealing breadth: he could be just as interested in how verse works on the page as in how words sound and scenes come alive in performance.
Among his best-known books are Les jeux des anciens, a study of games in the ancient world, Traité général de versification française, and L'art de la mise en scène. He died in Paris in 1887, leaving behind a body of work that still offers a window into 19th-century French literary culture and the history of performance.