Marc Fumaroli

Marc Fumaroli (10 June 1932 – 24 June 2020) was a French historian and essayist who was widely respected as an advocate for French literature and culture. While born in Marseille, Fumaroli grew up in the Moroccan city of Fez, and served in the French army during the Algerian War.

Following his appointment to a chair in Seventeenth Century Studies at Paris-Sorbonne University (1980), he was elected to a Chair in Rhetoric and Society in Europe (16th and 17th century) at the Collège de France. He held it from 1986 to 2002, until mandatory retirement, and was an emeritus professor. He is acknowledged for the revival of Rhetoric as field of study of European culture, in a sharp move away from both structuralism and post-modernism. His pioneering work remains L'Âge de l'éloquence (1980). In 1994, as a Voltaire scholar, he gave (in French) the British Academy's Master-Mind Lecture.

Fumaroli was elected to the Académie Française on 2 March 1995 and became its director. He was also a member of the Académie des Inscriptions, the sister academy devoted to high erudition.

In 2000, Fumaroli delivered the annual A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. A year later, he received the prestigious Balzan Prize for literary history and criticism.

Fumaroli was a foreign member of the British Academy and of the American Philosophical Society. He was also a member of the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought.

Fumaroli was promoted to commander of the French Legion of Honor in 2008, after previously being named chevalier in 1993 and officer in 2002.

After his death, the office of French President Emmanuel Macron praised Fumaroli as one of the country's greatest ever storytellers and historians.