A professor emeritus at the College de France, highly regarded for the boldness of his style and his innovative approaches, Paul Venn was also a major figure in the public debate among intellectuals in France.
Antiquity historian Paul Venn, known for his erudition and enthusiasm for communicating his love of the Greek and Roman worlds, has died at the age of 92, the publishing house Albin Michel announced today.
Ven, born in Aix-en-Provence (southern France), overturned established ideas about antiquity in his works on Greek mythology, Le Grecs ont-ils cru a leurs mythes?” (“Did the Greeks believe in their myths? – Essay on synthetic imagination” S. I. Zacharopoulos publications, 2003), ancient Christianity, “Quand notre monde est devenu chrétien” (“When our world became Christian”, 312-394 AD, Estia, 2012) or on society and sexuality in ancient Rome.
A professor emeritus at the College de France, highly regarded for the boldness of his style and his innovative approaches, Paul Venn was also a major figure in the public debate among intellectuals in France.
He received the 2014 Femina Essay Award for his book “Et dans l’éternité je ne m’ennuierai pas” (“And in eternity I will not hurt”, Home, 2018) and the National Library of France (BnF) award for the entirety of his work in 2017.
The general public also learned about him on the occasion of the success of his book in 2015 about Palmyra, an ancient Syrian city whose heritage was destroyed by the Islamic State group (“Palmyre, l’irremplacable tresor”, Palmyra — An irreplaceable treasure “, Home, 2017).
Having developed a teenage passion for the “Odyssey”, he entered the École normale supérieure in 1951. He joined the Communist Party, but would leave the PCF with the entry of Soviet tanks into Budapest in 1956.
An admirer of the poet René Char (“René Char en ses poèmes”, 1990) he was also a spiritual companion of Michel Foucault (“Michel Foucault: sa pensée, sa personne”, 2008).
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