Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset

Who was Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset?

Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset was a French poet and dramatist, best known for his poem Vert-Vert.

He was born at Amiens. During the last twenty-five years of his life, he regretted the frivolity of his youth, which enabled him to produce his most famous poem. He was brought up by the Jesuits of Amiens. Accepted as a novice at the age of seventeen, he was sent to study at the Collège Louis le Grand in Paris. After completing his course he was appointed, at the age of nineteen, to a post as assistant master in a college at Rouen.

Gresset published Vert-Vert at Rouen in 1734. It is the humorous story of a parrot, the delight of a convent whose talk was all of prayers and pious ambitions, and how it was conveyed to another convent as a visitor to please the nuns. On the way it falls among bad companions, forgets its convent language, and shocks the sisters on arrival by profane swearing. It is sent back in disgrace, punished by solitude and plain bread, repents, reforms and is finally killed by kindness. The treatment of the subject, the atmosphere which surrounds it, and the delicacy with which the little prattling ways of the nuns, their jealousies and trifling concerns, are presented, takes the reader entirely by surprise. The poem stands absolutely unrivalled, even among French contes en vers.