Urfé, Honoré d'

(1567-1625)

   writer

   Born in Marseille, Honoré d'Urfé was a politically active individual, as well as a writer, who took part in the ligue and various military campaigns (he fell ill and died during the war in the valteline, in which France and Savoy were allied against Spain). His Épîtres morales (1598, 1603) established the discourse on love that one can find in the poem Sireine (1604), in the drama Silvanie ou la morte vive (1625), and in his great pastoral novel L'Astrée, a work much discussed in the literary salons of the period. After the first three sections of this novel (1607, 1610, and 1619) were completed, fourth was added, published in 1627, through the efforts of d'urfé's secretary, Balthazar Baro, who, in 1628, added to it La Conclusion et Dernière Partie d'Astrée. The entire work is a summary of caustic love, but it is also a story of national origins through which the author establishes the moral ideal for the 17th-century classics.