Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet (17 June 17974 May 1847) was a Swiss literary critic and theologian.
Literary critic
He was born near Lausanne, Switzerland. Educated for the Protestant ministry, he was ordained in 1819, when already teacher of the French language and literature in the gymnasium at Basel; and throughout his life he was as much a critic as a theologian. His literary criticism brought him into contact with Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, for whom he obtained an invitation to lecture at Lausanne, which led to his famous work on Port-Royal.
Vinet's Chrestomathie française (1829), his Études sur la littérature française au XIX<sup>me</sup> siècle (1840–1851), and his Histoire de la littérature française au XVIII<sup>me</sup> siècle, together with his Études sur Pascal, Études sur les moralistes aux XVI<sup>me</sup> et XVII<sup>me</sup> siècles, Histoire de la prédication parmi les Réformés de France and other related works, gave evidence of a wide knowledge of literature, acute literary judgment and a distinguished faculty of appreciation. He adjusted his theories to the work under review, and condemned nothing as long as it met his literary standards.