Vincent Voiture

Vincent Voiture (Amiens, 1597 - Paris, 1648) was a French courtier and poet of the seventeenth century, one of the most characteristic figures of the Précieuses style. He wrote in French, and his importance lies in having shaped a refined kind of verse and a letter-writing prose that passed from hand to hand in the salons of the period.

The son of a wealthy wine merchant from Amiens, he entered court circles through an old schoolfellow, the count Claude d'Avaux, who introduced him to Gaston, Duke of Orléans. He accompanied the duke on diplomatic missions to Brussels and Lorraine, but he also won the favour of Cardinal Richelieu, and received posts and pensions from Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. In 1634 he was among the first members of the Académie française.

He frequented the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where he became a close friend of Julie d'Angennes. His talent for entertaining the circle brought him popularity, and his only serious rival was Antoine Godeau, whose feud ended when Richelieu made him bishop of Grasse. Voiture took no part in the Guirlande de Julie, the collective album of poems. A sonnet of his addressed to a certain Uranie sparked a dispute between the Uranists and the Jobelins, who compared it with a sonnet by Isaac de Benserade on Job.

His poetry is elaborate, gallant and mannerist, full of verbal play. His prose letters, by contrast, combine lively wit with real political insight, as in the letter on Richelieu's policy. Together with Jean de Balzac, he is regarded as a leading force in the reform of French prose, which ran parallel to Malherbe's reform of French verse.

He never published his works in book form during his lifetime. His verses and letters circulated in manuscript copies, and his nephew saw them into print after his death in 1648, at the outbreak of the Fronde. His legacy lies chiefly in the taste for witty correspondence and in the poetry of the salon.