Marin le Roy de Gomberville facts for kids

An old drawing representing the artist, Marin le Roy de Gomberville.

Marin le Roy, sieur du Parc et de Gomberville (born in 1600 – died on June 14, 1674) was a famous French poet and novelist. He was known for his long, adventurous stories. He was also one of the first and most active members of the Académie française, a very important group that looks after the French language.

Early Life and Writings

Marin le Roy was born in Paris. He started writing at a very young age. When he was just fourteen, he published a book of poems. This showed how talented he was from the start!

At twenty, he wrote a book called Discours sur l'histoire (which means "Discourse on History"). Two years later, when he was twenty-two, he wrote a story called La Charité. This story was a pastoral novel. A pastoral story is one where the characters are often disguised as shepherds and shepherdesses, living a simple life in the countryside. But in Gomberville's story, these characters actually represented real people. He even gave clues so readers could figure out who they were!

Adventures in Novels

Polexandre: A World Tour

Gomberville then wrote a much bigger and more exciting work called Polexandre. This novel was so long it came out in five parts between 1632 and 1637.

The main character, Polexandre, travels all over the world. He is searching for the secret island home of a princess named Alcidiane. His adventures take him to many unexpected places. These include Benin in Africa, the Canary Islands, Mexico, and the Antilles (islands in the Caribbean Sea). Through Polexandre's travels, readers learned a lot about the history and geography of these distant lands. The book even shared everything that was known about Mexican history at that time!

Other Works and Later Life

Another one of his novels was Cythérée, which came out in four parts between 1630 and 1642.

Later in his life, Gomberville became a Jansenist. This was a religious movement that focused on living a very strict and pious life. Because of this, he spent the last twenty-five years of his life living quietly and devoutly. In 1651, he published Jeune Alcidiane. This book was meant to correct any ideas from his earlier novels that he now felt were not pious enough.

The Doctrine of Morals

In 1646, Gomberville published an important book called La Doctrine des Moeurs (which means "The Doctrine of Morals"). This was an emblem book. An emblem book is a special kind of book that combines pictures with short sayings or poems that teach a moral lesson.

Gomberville's book was based on an earlier work by a Dutch artist named Otto van Veen. The pictures in Gomberville's first edition were engraved by Pierre Daret. These pictures were mirror images of the ones in van Veen's original book. La Doctrine des Moeurs was very popular and had many new editions published throughout the 1680s.