BOUHOURS, DOMINIQUE. — French Jesuit and man of letters, born in Paris on 15 May 1628, entered religious life in 1644, and died there on 27 May 1702.
First a teacher of rhetoric and then a tutor in aristocratic families, he was finally attached to the body of «scriptores» at the Louis-le-Grand college in Paris. His reputation as a stylist, no less than his urbanity, introduced him into the capital’s literary circles and into the friendship of great authors of the period, such as Racine and Boileau.
The anti-Jansenist polemic inspired the first part of B.’s output, including his devotional works, which today appear mannered, with the exception of the Paroles tirées de l'Écriture Sainte pour servir de consolation à ceux qui souffrent, published posthumously in 1704. Also mannered, although they went through many editions, were his biographical works, including the Vie de s. Ignace (Paris 1679) and Vie de s. François Xavier (there 1683).
B.’s particular field, however, was literary and linguistic criticism.
Following Vaugelas’s example, he wrote: Dontes sur la langue française, proposez à MM. de l'Académie française par un gentilhomme de province (Paris 1674), with the Remarques nouvelles sur la langue française (there 1675), and Suite des remarques nouvelles (1687, against Port-Royal). His rigorous purism helped to purify the language, but had it prevailed, it would have reduced French to a court language.
Two of B.’s works achieved European resonance. In a chapter of the Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugène (Paris 1671; Italian translation by Fr. D. Janno, Palermo 1714), B. asked whether the «bel esprit» of Parisian salons was to be found among other nations. Germans such as Cramer (Vindiciae nominis germanici contra quodam obtrectatores gallos, Berlin 1694) responded, as did Italians in the controversy over the following book, La manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages d'esprit (Paris 1687; 15th edition, translated into Latin, Italian,
English, and German). In those dialogues, Eudoxe, that is, B., represents the «classical» temperament of the France of Louis XIV, contrasted with the «baroque» temperament represented by Philanthe. The severe and at times contemptuous judgments on Italian authors, such as Tasso, and the failure to understand elevated poetic forms provoked fierce protests in Italy, especially after the Italian Jesuit C. Ettore’s response had drawn attention to the French book (Il buon gusto nei componimenti retorici, Bologna 1696). The first defender of Italian classicism was the marquis G. Orsi (Considerazioni sopra un famoso libro francese intitolato: La manière de bien penser, there 1703). In the controversy, B.’s cause after his death was taken up by the Mémoires de Trévoux (1705) and also by some Italians, such as Count Francesco Montani; on the Italian side, among others, Manfred and Baruffaldi took part; echoes of it are still found in Vico and, outside Italy, in Leibniz. This first great international literary controversy, which brought into play the deeper principles of every literature, has given rise in our own day to numerous studies.