DACIER, ANNE-LEFÈVRE. — French writer, born at Saumur in March 1654, died in Paris on 17 August 1720. Among her many translations from Greek and Latin, notable was her prose translation, faithful yet ponderous, of Homer’s two epics (1711–14). A. Houdar de La Motte then produced a poetic version in twelve cantos, adapted to the taste of the age (1714).
This gave rise to a literary controversy: in defence of Homer, chiefly on moral grounds, Mlle Dacier argued in Des causes de la corruption du goût (1715), to which La Motte replied, backed by numerous critics—from N. C. Trublet to Terrasson (whose Dissertation critique sur l'Iliade appeared in 1715), the Jesuit J. Hardouin (Apologie d'Homère, 1716), and Duclos. Mlle Dacier had converted to Catholicism in 1685.