Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien de (1619–55), French author. He gave up a military career to write plays and prose. A freethinker, influenced by Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), he satirized contemporary society in ingenious fantasies about voyages to the sun and moon. Edmond Rostand, in his play Cyrano de Bergerac, made him into a flamboyant romantic hero, handicapped in love because of an unusually large nose.