Honoré d'Urfé
French novelist (1568–1625)
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He was born at Marseille, the grandson of Claude d'Urfé, and was educated at the Collège de Tournon. A partisan of the League, he was taken prisoner in 1595, and, though soon set free, he was again captured and imprisoned. During his imprisonment he read Ronsard, Petrarch and above all the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor and Tasso's Aminta. After the defeat of the League in 1594, d'Urfé emigrated to Savoy whose duke was a relative of his mother. Here, he wrote the Epîtres morales (1598).
Honoré's brother Anne, comte d'Urfé, had married in 1571 the beautiful Diane de Châteaumorand, but the marriage was annulled in 1598 by Clement VIII. Anne d'Urfé was ordained to the priesthood in 1603, and died in 1621 dean of Montbrison.
Diane had a great fortune, and to avoid the alienation of the money from the D'Urfé family, Honoré married her in 1600. This marriage also proved unhappy; D'Urfé spent most of his time separated from his wife at the court of Savoy, where he held the charge of chamberlain. The separation of goods arranged later on may have been simply due to money embarrassments.
He died from injuries received by a fall from his horse at Villafranca, during a campaign against the Genoese.
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Memory and legacy
In 1757 L'Astrée was sufficiently in the public consciousness, or at any rate "Celadon" had become a byword for amorousness, to be referred to in passing by an Italian guest of Casanova.
In 1908 a bust of D'Urfé was erected at Virieu-le-Grand (Ain), where the greater part of L'Astrée was written.
An adaptation of L'Astrée, by French director Éric Rohmer, was released in 2007 under the title Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon (in English-speaking territories its title was The Romance of Astrea and Celadon). It was nominated for a Golden Lion at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, and star Andy Gillet won an Étoile d'Or in 2008 for Best Male Newcomer for his performance as Céladon.