Jean-Jacques Ampère (1800–1864)
Born 1800 CE, died 1864 CE.
Jean-Jacques Ampère (12 August 1800 – 27 March 1864) was a French philologist and man of letters. Born in Lyon, he was the only son of the physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836). Jean-Jacques' mother died while he was an infant. (But André-Marie Ampère had a daughter – Albine (1807–1842) – with his second wife.) On his tomb at the cemetery of Montmartre, Paris, he is named Jean-Jacques Antoine Ampère. His father's father was also named Jean-Jacques Ampère (executed in Lyon, 1793). He studied the folk songs and popular poetry of the Scandinavian countries in an extended tour in northern Europe. Returning to France in 1830, he delivered a series of lectures on Scandinavian and early German poetry at the Athenaeum in Marseille. The first of these was printed as De l'Histoire de la poésie (1830), and was practically the first introduction of the French public to the Scandinavian and German epics. Moving to Paris, he taught at the Sorbonne, and became professor of the history of French literature at the Collège de France. A journey in northern Africa (1841) was followed by a tour in Greece and Italy, in company with Prosper Mérimée, Jean de Witte and Charles Lenormant.
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