Molinet, Jean
MOLINET, JEAN (1433-1507), French poet and chronicler, was born at Desvres (Pas de Cakis). In 1475 he succeeded Georges Chastellain as historiographer of the house of Burgundy, and Margaret of Austria, governor of the Low Countries, made him her librarian. His continuation of Chastellain's chronicle, which covers the years from 1474 to 1504, remained unpublished until 1828 when it was edited (Paris, 5 vols.) by J. A. Buchon. It is far from possessing the historical value of his predecessor's work. A selection from his voluminous poetical works was published at Paris in 1531, Les Faictz et Dictz de feu . . . Jchan Molinet. ... He also translated the Roman de la rose into prose (pr. Lyons, 1503). He became, in 1501, canon of the church of Notre-Dame at Valenciennes, where he died on the 23rd of August 1507. He is noteworthy as the head of the vicious Burgundian school of poetry known as the rhStoriqueurs, characterized by the excessive use of puns and of puerile metrical devices. His chief disciple was his nephew, Guillaume Cr6tin (d. 1525), ridiculed by Rabelais as Raminagrobis, and Jean Lemaire des Beiges was his friend.
See A. Wauters in the Biographie nationale de Belgigue (vol. xv., 1899).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
