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Nicolas Boileau
(1636—1711)
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(1636–1711),
French critic and poet, and one of the major legislators of neo‐classical theory. His Art Poétique (1674), a four‐canto poem, established canons of taste and defined principles of composition and criticism, and achieved international currency. His mock‐epic Le Lutrin was widely influential in England. Dryden, Pope, and Addison regarded him as the supreme post‐classical arbiter of literary judgement.
