Senancour, étienne Pivert De
r´), 1770–1846, French writer. He is known principally for his autobiographical epistolary novel Obermann (1804, tr. 1903). The sentimental attitude toward nature and the morbid melancholy of this novel without a plot are reminiscent of Rousseau, but a pervasive preoccupation with intellectual problems sets it apart from other works of the same genre and period.