Jean Starobinski


Jean Starobinski was a Swiss literary critic.

Biography

Starobinski was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He studied classical literature, and then medicine at the University of Geneva, and graduated from that school with a doctorate in letters and in medicine. He taught French literature at the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Basel and at the University of Geneva, where he also taught courses in the history of ideas and the history of medicine.
His existential and phenomenological literary criticism is sometimes grouped with the so-called "Geneva School". He wrote landmark works on French literature of the 18th century - including works on the writers Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Voltaire - and also on authors of other periods. He has also written on contemporary poetry, art, and the problems of interpretation. His books have been translated in dozens of languages.
His knowledge of medicine and psychiatry brought him to study the history of melancholia. He was the first scholar to publish work on Ferdinand de Saussure's study of anagrams.
Jean Starobinski was a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques and other French, European and American learned academies. He held honorary degrees from numerous universities in Europe and America.
Starobinski died on 4 March 2019 in Morges, Switzerland, aged 98.

Works