Jean Chapelain was born in Paris on 4 December 1595 to bourgeois parents. His father, Sébastien Chapelain, was a respected king's notary, and Jeanne Corbière, his mother, a lover of poetry who oversaw her son's thorough education and encouraged him to pursue a literary career despite his initial interest in medicine. A devoted humanist, Chapelain learned Greek and Latin, read the Ancients, and mastered the languages and literatures of Spain and Italy. At the age of nineteen he became secretary to Sébastien le Hardy de la Trousse (who became provost-marshal of France) and later private tutor to de la Trousse's four children. During these early years, Chapelain began to write poetry and made the acquaintance of many of the most prominent literary figures of the period, including the celebrated poet François de Malherbe, whose ideas constituted the starting point of Chapelain's own...