Dacier, Anne-Lefèvre - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, p. 655

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

DACIER, ANNE-LEFÈVRE. - French writer, b. at Saumur in March 1654, d. at Paris on 17 Aug. 1720. Among her many translations from Greek and Latin, noteworthy was her prose rendering, faithful and ponderous, of the two Homeric poems (1711–14). On the basis of her translation of the Iliad, A. Houdar La Motte produced another, poetic version, in 12 cantos, adapted to the taste of the age (1714).

This gave rise to a literary war: M.me D.’s defence of Homer, made chiefly on ethical grounds in Des causes de la corruption du goût (1715), was answered by La Motte, supported by numerous critics, from N. C. Trublet to Terrasson (whose Dissertation critique sur l'Iliade dates from 1715), by the Jesuit J. Hardouin (Apologie d'Homère, 1716), and by Duclos. M.me D. had converted to Catholicism in 1685.

BIBL.: C. A. de Sainte-Beuve, M.me D., in Nouveaux lundis, 3rd ed., IX, Paris 1870, pp. 473–513; P. Mazon, M.me D. et les traducteurs d'Homère en France, Oxford 1936.

Joie Scudieri Ruggieri