DESMARETS DE SAINT-SORLIN, JEAN. – French poet and writer, born in Paris in 1595, died there on 28 October 1676.
In the preface to the poem Clovis ou la France chrétienne (1656) and elsewhere, D., a violent opponent of Jansenism, called for a new national and Christian art, and opened the famous Querelle. He also wrote dramas and novels, but in maturity preferred to devote himself to religious and moral literature. He translated the Imitation of Christ into verse (Paris 1654).
BIBL.: H. Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, VI, Paris 1922, pp. 445–518.
Iole Scudieri Ruggieri