Le Lutrin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Le Lutrin (1674) is a mock heroic poem by French author Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, in which he attacked and employed his wit against what he perceived to be the bad taste of his time. Swift's The Battle of the Books owed a great deal to Le Lutrin, although it was not a translation. Instead, it was an English work based on the same premise.
It also furnished Alexander Pope with a model for the The Rape of the Lock.
A lutrin is French for lectern.
Plot
The poem recounts a feud between the priest and the choirmaster of a French church. There the priest tries to position a reading-desk so as to obscure his rival from the sight of the congregation in a conflict that ends with champions of both sides gathering in a bookstore to pelt each other with books.
