Jean Starobinski (17 November 1920 – 4 March 2019) was a Swiss literary critic.
Biography
Starobinski was born in Geneva in 1920, the son of
Jewish physicians Aron Starobinski of Warsaw and Sulka Frydman of Lublin.
Both his parents left Poland in 1913. Aron Starobinski chose to study humanities as well as medicine, and his son Jean, who received his Swiss citizenship only in 1948, would follow his example, eventually becoming a practicing psychiatrist. Yet even in Switzerland, the Starobinski family could not escape reminders of a legacy of Europe-wide oppression. In November 1932, when Starobinski was 11 years old, in his family’s Geneva neighborhood of Plainpalais, murderous violence broke out against the Swiss Jewish socialist Jacques Dicker, who was leading an anti-fascist demonstration. The Swiss army fired upon the protesters, killing 13 and wounding 65.
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 (such as Michel de Montaigne). He also wrote on contemporary poetry, art, and the problems of interpretation. His books have been translated into dozens of languages.
His knowledge of medicine and psychiatry brought him to study the history of melancholia (notably in the Trois Fureurs, 1974). He was the first scholar to publish work (in 1964) on Ferdinand de Saussure's study of anagrams.
Jean Starobinski was a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (a component of the Institut de France) and other French, European and American learned academies. He held honorary degrees (honoris causa) from numerous universities in Europe and America.
Cramer, M, Starobinski, J and MA Barblan, 1978, Centenaire de la Faculte de Medecine de l’Universite de Geneve (1876-1976). Editions, Medecine et Hygiene, Geneve, Suisse.
