Anne Dacier (1654–1720)

Identifiers

Occupations

  • Author
  • Translator
  • Editor
Anne Dacier (1654–Aug. 17, 1720), born in Preuilly-sur-Claise, France, daughter of French professor of classical languages Tanneguy Lefèbvre. Dacier was a classical commentator, translator, and editor, renowned for her translations of Homer’s Iliad (1699) and Odyssey (1708) and for her work with her husband André Dacier on the Delphin editions of Latin classics. Dacier’s treatise Des Causes de la corruption de goût (1714; “Of the Causes of the Corruption of Taste”) contributed to the querelle des anciens et des modernes, a dispute concerning the merits of the ancients (classical authors), which Dacier defended, versus the moderns (contemporary authors). Alexander Pope consulted Dacier’s work extensively for his translation of the Iliad but was characteristically dismissive, mentioning her alongside Eliza Haywood in Book II of The Dunciad, and writing to John Sheffield, first duke of Buckingham, on the “French dispute concerning Homer”:
I cannot think quite so highly of the Lady [Dacier]’s learning, tho’ I respect it very much. It is great complaisance in that polite nation, to allow her to be a Critic of equal rank with her husband. To instance no further, his remarks on Horace shew more good Sense, Penetration, and a better Taste of his author, and those upon Aristotle's art of poetry more Skill and Science, than any of hers on any author whatever. In truth, they are much more slight, dwell more in generals, and are besides for the most part less her own; of which her remarks upon Homer are an example, where Eustathius is transcribed ten times for once that he is quoted. Nor is there at all more depth or learning in those upon Terence, Plautus, (or where they were most wanted) upon Aristophanes, only the Greek scholia upon the latter are some of the best extant. (Monday, 12 September 1718)
Dacier was, however, recognized as a pre-eminent scholar by other of her contemporaries. French scholar and man of letters Gilles Ménage, for example, called her “the most erudite woman in the present or the past” (History of Women Philosophers, 1690). French author and salonnière Madame de Lambert, Marquise de Saint-Bris, wrote: “I esteem Madame Dacier infinitely. Our sex owes her a great deal. She has protested against the common error which condemns us to ignorance. As much as from contempt as from an alleged superiority, men have denied us all learning. Madame Dacier is an example proving that we are capable of learning. She has associated erudition with good manners” (New Reflections on Women, 1727). Dacier died at the Louvre in Paris on August 17, 1720.
Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition (1911) [DACIER, ANNÉ] Lefèvre (1654–1720), French scholar and translator from the classics, was born at Saumur, probably in March 1654. On her father’s death in 1672 she removed to Paris, carrying with her part of an edition of Callimachus, which she afterwards published. This was so well received that she was engaged as one of the editors of the Delphin series of classical authors, in which she edited Florus, Dictys Cretensis, Aurelius Victor and Eutropius. In 1681 appeared her prose version of Anacreon and Sappho, and in the next few years she published prose versions of Terence and some of the plays of Plautus and Aristophanes. In 1684 she and her husband retired to Castres, with the object of devoting themselves to theological studies. In 1685 the result was announced in the conversion to Roman Catholicism of both M. and Mme Dacier, who were rewarded with a pension by the king. In 1699 appeared the prose translation of the Iliad (followed nine years later by a similar translation of the Odyssey), which gained for her the position she occupies in French literature. The appearance of this version, which made Homer known for the first time to many French men of letters, and among others to A. Houdart de la Motte, gave rise to a famous literary controversy. In 1714 la Motte published a poetical version of the Iliad, abridged and altered to suit his own taste, together with a Discours sur Homère, stating the reasons why Homer failed to satisfy his critical taste. Mme Dacier replied in the same year in her work, Des causes de la corruption du goût. La Motte carried on the discussion with light gaiety and badinage, and had the happiness of seeing his views supported by the abbé Jean Terrasson, who in 1715 produced two volumes entitled Dissertation critique sur l’Iliade, in which he maintained that science and philosophy, and especially the science and philosophy of Descartes, had so developed the human mind that the poets of the 18th century were immeasurably superior to those of ancient Greece. In the same year Père C. Buffier published Homère en arbitrage, in which he concluded that both parties were really agreed on the essential point—that Homer was one of the greatest geniuses the world had seen, and that, as a whole, no other poem could be preferred to his; and, soon after (on the 5th of April 1716), in the house of M. de Valincourt, Mme Dacier and la Motte met at supper, and drank together to the health of Homer. Nothing of importance marks the rest of Mme Dacier’s life [sic]. She died at the Louvre, on the 17th of August 1720.
See C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ix.; J. F. Bodin, Recherches historiques sur la ville de Saumur (1812–1814); P. J. Burette, Éloge de Mme Dacier (1721); Mémoires de Mme de Staël (1755); E. Egger, L’Hellénisme en France, ii. (1869); Mémoires de Saint-Simon, iii.; R. Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes (1856).