Full Name Dacier, Anne
Birth Date 1647-08-05
Death Date 1720-08-17
Birth Place Preuilly-sur-Claise (France)
Death Place Paris (France)
Residences
Biography

Anne Le Fèvre Dacier was the daughter of Tanneguy Le Fèvre, a professor of classical languages, who educated her in Latin and Greek. Under her father’s guidance, Anne Dacier quickly developed a skill for translating the classics into French. The works of Anne Dacier are of two categories: translations from classical languages and polemical treatises. She wrote substantive prefaces to the translations which cover the genres of history, drama, lyrical poetry and epic. In the polemical treatises she presented a neo-Aristotelian theory of art, language and moral education. Dacier was recognized as a preeminent classicist and translator by her contemporaries. She participated actively in the literary salons of Paris; Padua’s Academy of Ricovrati elected her to membership in 1679; and she was connected to intellectuals such as Pierre-Daniel Huet, Nicolas Boileau, and François Fénelon. Dacier married twice in her life. Her first marriage in 1664 to Jena Lesnier, the publisher of her father’s works, quickly deteriorated into a permanent separation. After the death of Lesnier, she married classicist André Dacier, a former student of her father, in 1683. In 1685, Anne Dacier and her husband André Dacier converted to Catholicism from Protestantism. They were granted a royal pension by Louis XIV because of this conversion.

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Created 2017-01-11, 10:49:41
Updated 2021-08-06, 02:52:20

Works