Alain-Renц? Lesage (Lesage Alain-Ren)

(1668-1747)
Born December 13, 1668 in Sarzo (now the Department of Morbihan). He studied law in Paris, in 1692 became a lawyer. He married (1694), decided to make a living literature. Next fifty years spent in Paris. To feed his family (he had four children), almost always wrote novels and plays. Lesage died Nov. 7, 1747.
Two of his many pieces remained in the repertoire - Crispin, a rival of his master (Crispin rival de son matre, 1707) and Turcaret (Turcaret), first staged in 1709. They launched an early prototype of Figaro - a servant who smarter than his master. The image of a heartless usurer Turcaret Lesage gave sharply satirical portrait shameless-farmers. Among the novels of Lesage allocated lame demon (Le Diable boiteux, 1709), the plot of which is borrowed from Spanish literature.

Business of the whole life became Lesage novel Gil Bias (Gil Blas), the first two books which came out in 1715, third in 1724 and the last in 1735. This picaresque novel whose action takes place in Spain, but the characters and plot - French. The novel brought to gallery representatives of various sectors of French society, and to honor the author, virtue triumphs, and vice punished. Unlike his contemporary Voltaire, Lesage did not have a philosophical turn of mind, he was an interested observer, not prone to propaganda. It was claimed that there was a Spanish original Gil Bias, which Lesage, as in many other cases, simply handled, but there is no evidence that. Sources Gil Bias to be found in the soul itself Lesage, in terms of his reading, in his observations of his contemporaries of Louis XIV and the beginning of the reign of Louis XV.