Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe, << tayn or tehn, ee paw LEET a DAWLF >> (1828-1893), was a French intellectual and critic. His application of the philosophy of determinism to art and literature did much to shape French intellectual attitudes in the 1800’s.
To understand the origin and development of an artist’s or writer’s work, Taine said we must discover all the significant facts about the person’s race (heredity), milieu (environment), and moment (state of the artistic tradition in which the person worked). Through this theory and through his emphasis on documentation, Taine greatly influenced the naturalist movement in literature (see Naturalism). Taine’s History of English Literature (1863) and Philosophy of Art (1865-1869) illustrate his deterministic philosophy. His Origins of Contemporary France (1875-1893) blames the French Revolution for the decline he saw in France’s greatness.
Taine was born on April 21, 1828, in Vouziers. He was a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris almost continuously from 1864 to 1883. He died on March 5, 1893.
