Nicolas Boileau, also known as Boileau-Despréaux, has retrospectively been raised to the rank of emblematic figure of French classicism. He has been described as the "lawgiver of Parnassus" (a reference to his being an arbiter of taste), the champion of poetic rationalism, and a chief apologist for the ancients in their quarrel with the moderns. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, specialists of the era consider the truth about Boileau to be more nuanced. Boileau was first and foremost a poet engaged in the literary life of his time. After having written his Satires, a vigorous denunciation of the faults and mistakes commonly made in the literary world of his days, he attempted, in his Art poétique (1674), to determine the rules that should govern the creation and reception of art in most literary genres.

Published during the same year, his translation...