CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANCOIS RENé DE

(1768–1848), was a French writer. He helped begin the literary style known as Romanticism, which emphasized man’s emotion in a rather flowery style. In 1802, writing on his conversion to Christianity in Le Genie du Christianisme, Chateaubriand declared:

J’ai pleure’ et j’ai cru. (I wept and I believed.)1648