Antoine Furetière

Antoine Furetière (28 December 161914 May 1688)

Career He was admitted to the Académie Française in 1662 by virtue of his satire (1658), among other works.

One of Furetière's most important literary works was Le Roman bourgeois (1666). This satirical novel described everyday life, especially within the legal profession, and ridiculed the fashionable romances of Madeleine de Scudéry

French dictionary project At its founding, the Académie Française had been entrusted with the task of producing a complete dictionary of the French language. Furetière initially participated in the collaborative project with enthusiasm, but eventually grew frustrated with his colleagues' approach and slow progress and began work on his own dictionary, probably around 1676–1678. When members of the academy heard that Furetière was about to publish his dictionary, they interfered, alleging that he had stolen their material and violated the monopoly they had held on French dictionaries since 1672. In 1685, after fierce recrimination on both sides, Furetière was expelled from the academy, and the French government revoked his permission to publish the dictionary. In 1690, Furetière's Dictionaire universel was published posthumously in the Netherlands with a Preface prepared by his friend Pierre Bayle.