CREBILLON, CLAUDE-PROSPER JOLYOT, SIEUR DE

( (sire of ), ) born Feb. 14, 1707, Paris died April 12, 1777, Paris byname Crbillon Fils (French: Crbillon Son) French novelist whose works provide a lighthearted, licentious, and satirical view of 18th-century high society in France. The son of an outstanding French poet-dramatist, Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon, he displayed a completely different temperament from that of his father (who heartily disapproved of his son's life and works). Crbillon fils spent all his life in Paris except for two periods of exile in the provinces as a result of satirical allusions in his novels. Of these novels, the best known are L'cumoire (1735; The Skimmer), Les garements du coeur et de l'esprit (1736; The Wayward Head and Heart), and Le Sopha, conte moral (1742; The Sofa; A Moral Tale). These novels were appreciated by Laurence Sterne, who saw in the writing some of his own inconsequential narrative style. Along with this literary activity, Crbillon was a founder in 1729 of the Socit du Caveau, named after a cafe in which he and his friends dined, where Crbillon earned a reputation as a wit and storyteller. Like his father he enjoyed the patronage of Mme de Pompadour.