Chénier, Marie-Joseph

(1764-1811)

   political figure and writer The brother of andré chénier, Marie-Joseph Chénier, like his brother, was born in Constantinople, where their father was French consul general. Leaving a military career to dedicate himself to literature, Chénier composed lyrical poems (Poésies, posthumous, 1844) and the words to a number of patriotic songs (notably "Le Chant du depart"). Animated by an ardent revolutionary spirit, his tragic plays had, at the time, considerable success: Charles IX ou l'École des rois (1788, performed by talma in 1789), Henri VIII (1791), and Caius Gracchus (1792). A member of the jacobin club, then the Convention, the Council of Five Hundred, and, finally, the Tribunate, and the author of numerous epigrams and moral and political satires, he was the object of attack from his literary rivals and his political enemies. Accused of having betrayed his brother, he was forced to pen a vigorous defense: Épitre sur la calonnie (1797). A supporter of Napoléon Bonaparte (see napoléon i), and named during the first empire inspector-general of the university, after 1806 he fell somewhat into disfavor; his Tibère, for example, could not be performed until after his death. Meanwhile, Chénier devoted himself to his major work, Tableau de la litérature française de 1789 à 1808 (posthumous, 1816), in which he defends the neoclassical school of literature.