Paul Stapfer

Paul Stapfer (14 May 1840 – 7 January 1917) was a French writer and critic.

Biography

Paul Stapfer was born in Paris, the sixth of nine children born into an old Protestant family of Swiss origin. His father, Charles-Louis (1799–1880), was an engineer at the Bridges and Roads. His mother, Marie Suzanne Louise, née Monod (1809–1886) and was of Vaudois origin.

He studied at the Lycée Bonaparte in Paris. In the second year of secondary school he won 2nd prize for Greek themes. He studied at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, where he took French composition classes with the philosopher Étienne Vacherot (1809–1897). He obtained his bachelor's degree in classics in 1860.

He began a precarious career as a "private" teacher. For a short time, he was tutor to the son of the statesman William Waddington. Around 1865, he was tutor to the grandchildren of the historian and politician François Guizot, with whom several members of his family had been linked for two generations.

He self-published his first essay, Short Comedy of Literary Criticism in 1866.

He moved to Guernsey to perfect his English and was a French master at the Royal Elizabeth College, Saint Peter Port, from 1866 to 1870. There he made friends with the future English critic George Saintsbury (1845–1933). He struck up a relationship with Victor Hugo, who entertained him at Hauteville House from October 1866, and whom he would see again in Paris a year after Hugo's return to France. This relationship gave rise to several works on the writings and person of the poet.

He left Guernsey for Paris in 1870 and, in April, defended a classics thesis on Laurence Sterne and a Latin thesis on Francis Bacon at the Sorbonne. He became friends with Guillaume Guizot, the historian's son, who had just been appointed deputy chair of French literature at the Collège de France. He taught a free course in literature in Paris for some time.

On 1 December 1874, he was appointed to teach foreign literature at the Faculty of Letters in Grenoble. He became a full professor in 1876.

On 6 February 1879 he married Alice Lavallée (born 1843), the daughter of a former representative to the Constituent Assembly who had become a notary. On 26 October 1881 he moved from the chair of foreign literature (mainly English and German) to that of French literature.

On 16 August 1883, he was appointed professor of French literature at the Faculty of Letters in Bordeaux, where he had requested to be transferred, supplanting the famous critic Émile Faguet. The French Academy awarded him a prize for his work Molière and Shakespeare, which was in fact a translation of the book by the Franco-German novelist Claas Hugo Humbert, who — it seems — was not eligible for the prize as a German national. Stapfer was appointed Dean of his Faculty on 20 November 1890, and his deanship was renewed twice more, until November 1899. He was made a knight of the Legion of Honour in 1895 (officer in 1906).

He was suspended for six months from his duties as dean by the Minister of Public Instruction (ministerial decree of 25 July 1898) for having, on 23 July, publicly expressed, albeit covertly, his opinion in favour of Alfred Dreyfus in his speech at the funeral of the rector Auguste Couat, whom he had known in Grenoble. As a result, he was denounced by Maurras and supported by Clemenceau.

From June to October 1898, he published his Billets de la Province in Le Siècle under the pseudonym Michel Colline — to avoid the risk of dismissal. He resumed teaching on 10 January 1899.

An honorary dean, now retired from teaching, he published another twenty or so works, focusing increasingly on philosophical and religious issues.

Paul Stapfer died in Bordeaux on 7 January 1917 at the age of 76. He left no descendants.

Works

• Petite comédie de la critique littéraire, ou Molière selon trois écoles philosophiques (1866)
• Causeries guernesiaises, édition accompagnée de dix lettres en anglais sur des sujets littéraires (1869)
• Laurence Sterne, sa personne et ses ouvrages, étude biographique et littéraire, précédée d’un fragment inédit de Sterne (1870; 1881)
• Causeries parisiennes (1872)
• L'antiquité grecque et latine dans les œuvres de Shakespeare (tome I de Shakespeare et l’Antiquité) (1879; awarded the Prix Marcelin Guérin by the French Academy in 1880)
• Variétés morales et littéraires (1881)
• Études sur la littérature française moderne et contemporaine (1881)
• Goethe et ses deux chefs-d'œuvre classiques (1882; 1886)
• Les tragédies romaines de Shakespeare (1883)
• Drames et poèmes antiques de Shakespeare (1884)
• Molière et Shakespeare (1880; 1886)
• Racine et Victor Hugo (1886; 1922)
• Shakespeare et les tragiques grecs. (tome III de Shakespeare et l’Antiquité) (1888; 2nd edition, revised and corrected the same year)
• Rabelais, sa personne, son génie, son œuvre (1889)
• Des réputations littéraires, essais de morale de l'histoire (1893; first series)
• Montaigne (1895)
• La famille et les amis de Montaigne, causeries autour du sujet (1895)
• La Grande prédication chrétienne en France. Bossuet, Adolphe Monod (1898; awarded the Prix Sobrier-Arnould by the French Academy)
• Billet de la Province (1898; under the pen name Michel Colline)
• Étude de Goethe (1901)
• Victor Hugo et l'Affaire Dreyfus (1901; speech given at Pessac-sur-Dordogne on 24 June 1900)
• Des réputations littéraires, essais de morale de l'histoire (1901; second series)
• Victor Hugo et la grande poésie satirique en France (1901)
• L'Art et la matière chez M. Anatole France (1904)
• Paradoxes et truismes d'un ancien doyen (1904)
• Victor Hugo à Guernesey, souvenirs personnels (1905)
• Questions esthétiques et religieuses (1906)
• Sermon laïque ou propos de morale et de philosophie (1906)
• Études sur Goethe (Goethe et Lessing, Goethe et Schiller, Werther, Iphigénie en Tauride, Hermann et Dorothée, Faust) (1906)
• Vers la vérité (1909)
• Récréations grammaticales et littéraires (1909)
• Humour et humoristes (1911)
• L'inquiétude religieuse du temps présent (1911)
• Petits sermons de guerre (1914; preached in the Mansle Temple (Charente) from 4 August to 4 October 1914)
• Dernières variations sur mes vieux thèmes (1914)
• Les leçons de la guerre (1915)
• Ce qui est vrai toujours (1916)

External links

• Works by Paul Stapfer at Gallica
• Works by Paul Stapfer at Persée
• Works by Paul Stapfer at JSTOR