Abstract
This essay explores the distinction between “gentil” and piquant raillery as found at the salon of Beatrix of Cusance, Duchess of Lorraine, as described in two volumes written by Richard Flecknoe ( A Treatise of the Sports of Wit and Additional Epigrams of the Year 1674), and as transformed in Margaret Cavendish's The World's Olio, Nature's Pictures , and Sociable Letters. Piquant raillery involved semi-serious personal attacks and mild bawdry, while “gentil” raillery was more tame. Both sorts of raillery, as Flecknoe explains, are not railing; that is, raillery does not betray anger. While Cavendish mostly engages in raillery, she does slip into railing in her prefaces on occasion.
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