Nicolas Fréret
Nicolas Fréret (French: [fʁeʁɛ]; 15 February 1688 – 8 March 1749) was a French scholar.
Life
He was born at Paris on 15 February 1688. His father was procureur to the parlement of Paris, and destined him to the profession of the law. His first tutors were the historian Charles Rollin and Father Desmolets (1677-1760). Amongst his early studies history, chronology and mythology held a prominent place.[1]
To please his father he studied law and began to practise at the
During his three months of confinement he studied Xenophon, the fruit of which appeared later in his memoir on the Cyropaedia. From the time of his liberation in March 1715 his life was uneventful. In January 1716 he was received as associate of the Academy of Inscriptions and in December 1742 he was made perpetual secretary. He worked without intermission for the interests of the Academy, not even claiming any property in his own writings, which were printed in the Recueil de l'academie des inscriptions.[1]
Works
The list of his memoirs, many of them posthumous, occupies four columns of the Nouvelle Biographie générale. They treat of history, chronology, geography, mythology and religion. Throughout he appears as the keen, learned and original critic; examining into the comparative value of documents, distinguishing between the mythical and the historical, and separating traditions with an historical element from pure
He was one of the first scholars of Europe to undertake the study of the Chinese language, under the guidance of Arcadio Huang, a Chinese man working as translator and librarian for king Louis XIV;[3] and in this he was engaged at the time of his committal to the Bastille. He died in Paris on 8 March 1749.[1]
After his death several works of an
An inaccurate edition of Fréret's works was published in 1796-1799. A new and complete edition was projected by
Notes
References
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fréret, Nicolas". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 208. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (2001) How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and ...' Stanford University Press ISBN 0-8047-4693-1
- Melchor Ocampo. Freret - José Herrera Peña - Tripod