DESMARETS or DESMARETZ, JEAN, SIEUR DE SAINT SORLIN French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris in 1595. The success of his romance Ariane in 1631 led to his admission to the circle that met at the house of Valentine Conrart and later developed into the Academie Fran caise. Desmarets was its first chancellor. He began to write for the theatre at the request of his patron Richelieu. In this kind he produced a comedy long regarded as a masterpiece, Les Vision naires (1637) ; a prose-tragedy, Erigone (1638) ; and Scipion (1639), a tragedy in verse. His success brought many official pre ferments. His long epic Clovis (1657) is noteworthy because Des marets rejected the traditional pagan background and maintained that Christian imagery should supplant it. With this standpoint he contributed several works in defence of the moderns in the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. In his later years Des marets wrote religious poems. He was a violent opponent of the Jansenists, against whom he wrote a Reponse a l'insolente apologie de Port-Royal . . . He died in Paris on Oct. 28, 1676.
See also H. Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes (1856) , pp. 8o—Io3 and R. Kerviler, Desmarets (1879) .