Mademoiselle De Research Articles

Corpi sofferenti d’amore. L’Ingénu di Voltaire tra intêret e sensibilité

In his conte philosophique L’Ingénu (1767), Voltaire engages in his philosophical battle through an original analysis of the love affair between the naïve protagonist Huron and Mademoiselle de Saint-Yves, a young Breton girl with a strict Catholic upbringing. The conflict between their desire to marry and the religious and political institutions is represented here by means of stylistic grafts belonging to the tradition of the genre of the sentimental novel, which in the middle of the 18th century was on the rise in France and the rest of Europe. Making the most recent discoveries in the medical-psychological field his own, Voltaire thus aims to establish the empathic bond on which the moral background of sentimental rhetoric was based through the representation of the psychological and physical suffering of the young protagonists. Distancing himself from the traditional concept of moral ‘virtue’ that was at the basis of the English sentimental novel, Voltaire thus instituted a reflection on amorous sentiment, now conceived not only as the main expression of the passion of individuals, but as a critical device to try to elaborate in an alternative way that reunion between private and public virtues that was at the basis of the Enlightenment mission.

Mademoiselle de Montpensier: female politician and military leader during the Fronde

Importance. The history of women, the interest in which in national and foreign historiography does not wane, is a pressing problem for historians studying the Fronde in France (1648–1653). During the Civil War, active aristocratic women had the opportunity to express themselves as politicians and even as military leaders on an equal basis with men, and sometimes even overshadow them. An example of this is Mademoiselle de Montpensier who left a detailed account of her enterprises in her Memoirs. They are the main source of this research work and are supplemented by information from the “Memoirs” of another participant in the Fronde, Cardinal de Retz. The purpose of the work is to evaluate her actions in political and military events during the Fronde, to find out the reasons why the Duchess was able to become a political and military leader at a time when women did not have the right to be ministers or generals.Research Methods. To study the materials within the «Memoirs», methods of social history, the study of sources of personal origin, and historical and comparative methods are used.Results and Discussion. The analysis of the sources used shows that Princess de Montpensier was by no means a typical frondeur – her goals, means, and motivations were different from those used by many other “rebels”. Many aristocratic women became “oppositionists” for economic reasons – they joined parties in order to achieve personal goals, which were often selfish. The princess, young, active, physically strong and healthy, received a rich inheritance and solved political and military problems during the Fronde. The combination of personal qualities, wealth and high position in society gave her the opportunity to become the most famous and active frontwoman.Conclusion. To summarize, it should be noted that the memoirist purposefully sought to participate in the political life of France in the mid-17th century. and achieved success. She became a more significant politician than her father, Gaston d’Orleans, and took a significant part in the activities of the party of the Prince de Condé and in the campaigns of his army.

Scribleriana Transferred: Portraits, Manuscripts, and Books, 2020–2022.

Scribleriana Transferred: Portraits, Manuscripts, and Books, 2020–2022.

Klein, Ula Lukszo. Sapphic Crossings: Cross-Dressing Women in Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Klein, Ula Lukszo. <i>Sapphic Crossings: Cross-Dressing Women in Eighteenth-Century British Literature</i>

Семейные стратегии 1680-х гг.

he article examines the case of the annulment of a marriage between Mademoiselle de La Force and Charles de Briou, which took place in 1687. Although contemporaries often discussed this scandalous incident, its causes are not completely clear. But the situation becomes more intelligible if we look at it from the point of view of the family strategy of different clans and the court policy of Louis XIV.

Mademoiselle de Montpensier: Writings, Châteaux, and Female Self-Construction in Early Modern France. Sophie Maríñez.

<i>Mademoiselle de Montpensier: Writings, Châteaux, and Female Self-Construction in Early Modern France</i>. Sophie Maríñez.

Les héritières de Psyché au XVIIe siècle: Parallèle de La Fontaine et de La Force

Late seventeenth-century France was fascinated by the myth of Psyche. The Greek princess inspired not only Jean de La Fontaine, who rewrote Apuleius’ original fable (1669); more indirectly, Psyche’s misfortune and happily ever after were a fertile base in the genre of the fairy tale. Whereas the influence of the myth of Psyche has been discussed for the famous fairy tales by Charles Perrault and the 'contes de fees litteraires' by Madame d’Aulnoy, this essay investigates its relation with 'Plus Belle que Fee' (1697) by the less known Mademoiselle de La Force. A comparison between the ancient myth, rewritten by La Fontaine, and the modern – and even subversive – fairy tale sheds light on the literary and socio-political tensions of the late seventeenth century, for La Force participates in the 'querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' and in the 'querelle des femmes'.

Mademoiselle de Joncquières réal. by Emmanuel Mouret

Reviewed by: Mademoiselle de Joncquières réal. by Emmanuel Mouret Anna Dimitrova Mouret, Emmanuel, réal. Mademoiselle de Joncquières. Int. Cécile de France, Édouard Baer, Alice Isaaz, Natalia Dontcheva. Moby Dick, 2018. Following Fritz Wendhausen's silent film Madame de la Pommeraye's Intrigues (1922) and Robert Bresson's Les dames du bois de Boulogne (1945), this feature is another adaptation of an episode in Diderot's novel Jacques le fataliste et son maître, published at the end of the eighteenth century. Mouret offers a contemporary reading of this pre-revolutionary love triangle tale and its twists of deception, revenge, and redemption. Viewers witness and feel the spirit of libertinage and the female characters' agency as both perpetrators and victims. Madame de la Pommeraye (Cécile de France) [End Page 251] is a beautiful aristocratic widow living in a vast estate outside Paris. For several months, she hosts Le marquis des Arcis (Édouard Baer), a prominent libertine who strives to win her heart. Le marquis succeeds in seducing her, making her his latest conquest. He leaves her mansion believing that they will stay good friends. Devastated, la Madame designs a revenge plan: "Ma colère est pleine d'un esprit de justice. [...] Je vois en moi le genre féminin, et en lui, le genre masculin." Her stratagem involves two of society's cast-out women, Madame de Joncquières (Natalia Dontcheva) and her daughter Mademoiselle de Joncquières (Alice Isaaz), who, in order to survive, have been driven to prostitution. Madame de la Pommeraye stages circumstances and meetings between the Joncquières and le Marquis. As premeditated, the exceptional beauty of Mademoiselle de Joncquières (who resembles "une vierge de Raphaël") smites le marquis, who is made to believe that the young woman is a devout virgin. Shot in soft daylight and pastel colors, the film is a visual pleasure. Although the exposition is a bit long and the titular Mademoiselle de Joncquières appears relatively late, the story captivates and flows smoothly from scene to scene. Mouret's cinematic tools create a specific sense of place and time. The juxtaposition of nature scenes and lavish interiors contributes to the impact of the first part of the film. Mouret uses long shots for the magnificent outdoors and close-ups and medium shots inside the mansions. Later, the characters' dangerous liaisons are filmed mostly in the buildings' closed spaces, adding to the sense of psychological manipulation. At times, the dialogue is too theatrical, but the conversations capture the old-fashioned eighteenth-century French language and expression. Henceforth, the gossip of Parisian aristocrats conveys the fate and disgrace of the Joncquières. The conversations flow seamlessly with the film score: baroque music played on a harpsichord, a typical musical instrument in pre-revolutionary France. The superb costume design by Pierre-Jean Larroque earned him a second César des meilleurs costumes in 2019, following his work on Marguerite (2015). The feature premiered at Toronto International Film Festival (2018), ranking as one of the top three films. It will please not only the fans of period dramas such as Les liaisons dangereuses and Ridicule, but anyone interested in representations of the turns and twists of human nature. Anna Dimitrova Columbus State University (GA) Copyright © 2019 American Association of Teachers of French

Mademoiselle de Montpensier: Writings, Châteaux, and Female Self-Construction in Early Modern France. By Sophie Maríñez

This volume gives a compelling and detailed survey of the life and times of Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, ‘la Grande Mademoiselle’, Duchesse de Montpensier: granddaughter of Marie de’ Medici and Henri IV, first cousin to Louis XIV, probably the wealthiest unmarried woman in Europe, and, on this account, one of the most radical. Sophie Maríñez is excellent on Montpensier’s renegotiation of constructs traditionally ascribed to women: most obviously virtue, chastity, and submission to patriarchal figures. In Montpensier’s case, this process of self-construction is literalized in the commissioning of buildings, gardens, and portraits and tracked in her correspondence and memoirs. Thus Montpensier continues in forceful terms a conversation about structural misogyny found previously, for example, in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la cité des dames. Maríñez also fully situates Montpensier’s work in the tradition of female architectural patronage, moving from Anne de Bretagne’s chateau in Nantes to Diane de Poitiers’s Anet and the Medici queens’ Tuileries and Luxembourg. A brief final chapter deals with her fictional works and their imagined spaces: a moon, an island, faraway realms. Throughout, scrupulous biographical detail is extracted from Montpensier’s life-writing and analysed for the strategic positioning it reveals, in a (very real) world where everybody around her is after her money. Maríñez considers two major, overlapping patterns in Montpensier’s work: a search for maternal substitutes (her mother, Marie de Bourbon, had died in childbirth at the age of twenty-one), and an obsessive reiteration of rank. This latter emphasis emerges particularly after the Fronde: Montpensier had famously ordered a cannonade shot directly at the king’s troops, resulting in her forced exile to Saint-Fargeau in 1652. From 1660, following conversations with Mme de Motteville, she began seriously to envisage a way of life free from the constraints of marriage; she was exiled again, now to Eu, following a refusal to marry the King of Portugal, who had been described to her as debauched, unmannerly, and fond of murder. The portraits she commissioned of herself are brilliantly suggestive repositories of familial detail: painted by Pierre Bourgignon, she poses as Minerva, virgin goddess, and protectrix of the arts, holding but looking triumphantly away from a small inset portrait of her father, who seems insignificant and immobilized in comparison. Throughout, this sort of interdisciplinary analysis is the book’s strength. It is let down, however, by the quality of production. The photographs look like (and presumably are) holiday snaps, with all the attendant problems of foreshortening and truncation. Some are terribly blurred. Quotations move bizarrely and inconsistently between English and French. Why is Mme de Sévigné only read in translation, for example, and her renowned announcement of Montpensier’s late and shocking attempt to marry, for love, the lowly Comte de Lauzun (‘la chose la plus étonnante, la plus surprenante, la plus merveilleuse, la plus miraculeuse’, and so on and so forth) given only in English? These are issues for the editors at Brill Rodopi as much as for the author.

Graphic Interlude

This graphic interlude features a selection of pictures included in Mademoiselle de Phocas, Gothic-Industrial Photographer, a novel by Naomi translated into English by Paul Edwards, photographs by the translator.

‘. . . But Is It Literature?’

As a hybrid between ‘high’ literature and ‘trivial’ comics, graphic adaptations have been the subject of extensive debate in Germany. This article discusses the specific cultural conditions of graphic adaptation in Germany, which have been influenced by a process of emancipation from deeply rooted prejudice against comics as a medium of popular culture. To illustrate the changes brought about by the term ‘graphic novel’ around 2000, this article analyses two examples of a newer generation of graphic adaptation in detail. Flix’s Faust (2009–2010) and Drushba Pankow’s Das Fräulein von Scuderi [Mademoiselle de Scudery] (2011) represent a new self-confident approach to classic literature, but they also reflect on their own status as adaptations and thus contribute to ‘closing the gap’ between ‘high’ and popular culture.

The “new philosophy” condemned by the Holy Office: the affair of Mademoiselle de Bourignon

The “new philosophy” condemned by the Holy Office: the affair of Mademoiselle de Bourignon

“Oh! Non, je ne pourrai jamais te le dire … j’aime un homme!”: Hermaphrodite et l’esthétisation de l’homosexualité dans Mademoiselle de Maupin

This article examines Gautier’s novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) as an example of nineteenth-century French society’s interest and reluctance regarding male homosexuality, and the subsequent strategy of allusion that is used to discuss this topic. It analyses the method used by the male protagonist d’Albert to render his feelings for “Theodore” (the cross-dressed woman Madeleine de Maupin) culturally acceptable. D’Albert turns his allegedly monstrous homoerotic desire into an aesthetic quest by comparing “Theodore” to the god Hermaphroditus, who embodies perfect neoclassical beauty and whose harmonious combination of masculine and feminine traits idealizes sexual ambiguity. This article also contrasts d’Albert’s discursive strategy of discretion with Madeleine’s own openness regarding her lesbian feelings, thus highlighting the difference in treatment between male homosexuality and lesbianism in the nineteenth century. (In French)

Aux sources de la poétique de Théophile Gautier: la préface d’“Albertus”

Théophile Gautier is known to be the founder of the “art for art’s sake” literary theory which is mainly outlined, according to the critics, in the preface of the novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835). Actually the first statements on the autonomy of art and supremacy of beauty can be traced back to the preface of the collection of poems entitled Albertus (1832). First of all, this paper aims to analyse the above-mentioned text in order to both show the originality and independence of the poet early in his career, within a context dominated by Hugo’s poetics, and to highlight the elements of its new aesthetic feeling; secondly, to relate this aesthetic to the further developments of Gautier’s poetics, highly heterogeneous though sharing a specific attitude towards art and artistic creation, and in which the consolation that comes from art has a crucial role. This perspective, I will argue, may provide a more authentic interpretation of Gautier’s poetry, so to move past the preconceptions about his works.

Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon by Bo Karen Lee (review)

Reviewed by: Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon by Bo Karen Lee Lisa Webster, Editor-in-Chief (bio) Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon. By Bo Karen Lee. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2014. 264 pp. $29.00. “Self-denial can ruin a person,” writes Bo Karen Lee at the start of Sacrifice and Delight, her illuminating study of the theologies of seventeenth-century mystics Jeanne Guyon and Anna Maria van Schurman. And yet, Lee wonders, how is it that self-abnegation played such an important role in the religious thinking of two such undeniably powerful women? Madame Jeanne Guyon is a figure whose reputation has, in the past twenty years or so, recovered a great deal from both the lows to which it had fallen during her own lifetime (marked by imprisonment and disgrace) as well as subsequent critical disregard. At the height of her influence, Guyon had been in the orbit of Madame de Maintenon, the second (and “secret”) wife of Louis XIV. When the coterie of duchesses who had come to admire Guyon’s teaching arranged for her to meet the up-and-coming François de Fénelon, a spiritual match was made. Fénelon was profoundly influenced by the pious widow; she became, in effect, his spiritual director, and he would be her champion in the course of the so-called Quietist controversy. This episode in French religious history centered on a pitched battle between two bishops, Fénelon and Bossuet, over some fairly subtle theological points—the limits of self-denial among them. But Bossuet made it personal, as we would say, winning the argument by condemning Guyon’s character along with her theology. Seven years in the Bastille did not dampen Guyon’s ardor for teaching, and, as Lee notes, she emerged to become influential in Protestant circles (11). [End Page 136] While Guyon’s life and thought have received recent critical attention, Anna Maria van Schurman remains practically unknown, her theology “inaccessible to those who have no working knowledge of Latin, German and Dutch” (7). Lee’s sensitive reading, along with a 40-page Appendix of translated letters and fragments, should do much to inaugurate a resurgence of interest in van Schurman’s work, especially, as Lee notes, as van Schurman was considered in her lifetime the “‘brightest star’ among the educated women of Europe” (7). A prodigy, the young Anna Maria was the first woman to be admitted to the University of Utrecht; she “exercised an uncanny command of Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Aramaic, and Syriac”; and, as Lee sums up “to ‘have been in Utrecht without having seen Mademoiselle de Schurman was like having been to Paris without having seen the king’” (8). Nevertheless, like Guyon, van Schurman fell from favor upon embracing a spirituality that placed self-denial before any other spiritual effort: rather than an advanced mystical attainment appropriate only for an exceptional few, denial of self, in van Schurman’s understanding, was the very basis for Christian life. Lee begins by considering van Schurman’s Eukleria—a spiritual autobiography published in 1673 when the “star of Utrecht” had become a disciple of Jean Labadie and thus, by the lights of society, fallen into a kind of madness. Lee’s reading of the contrast between this work and a defense of women’s education (written some thirty years earlier) is intriguing; she shows us how van Schurman’s repudiation of her own earlier thinking figures in her new understanding, how she determines that scientia, “a lower form of knowledge” is not enough to catalyze the radical overthrow of self (34). In the following chapter, Lee deftly analyzes portions of van Schurman’s letters to the German Pietist Johann Jakob Schütz in which the theologian describes her own difficulties in trying to overcome the self, as a matter of spiritual practice—but then does relate an experience of mystical union. In Lee’s reading, self-denial becomes, for van Schurman, not so much an act of violence toward the self as a kind of surrender to divine grace, an...

Portraits of Mademoiselle de Charolais as a Franciscan Friar: Gender, Religion and Cross-Dressing

Art HistoryVolume 37, Issue 5 p. 890-911 Original Article Portraits of Mademoiselle de Charolais as a Franciscan Friar: Gender, Religion and Cross-Dressing Melissa Percival, Melissa PercivalSearch for more papers by this author Melissa Percival, Melissa PercivalSearch for more papers by this author First published: 22 September 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12104Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume37, Issue5November 2014Pages 890-911 RelatedInformation

Lusting after the Louvre Hermaphrodite: Medical Discourse and Androgyny in Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin and Its Popular Predecessors

Nineteenth-century France was so enamored of androgyny that the hermaphrodite sculpture installed in the Louvre in 1807 had to be protected from visitors' caresses with a barrier. (1) A perennial admirer of the sculpture, Theophile Gautier composed that most famous of Parnassian poems, Contralto, in 1852 as an homage to its ambiguous beauty. (2) Moreover, the plot of his masterpiece, Mademoiselle de Maupin, centers on the mysterious sexual identity of the cross-dressing, eponymous protagonist. A diverse range of nineteenth-century novelists exploit the mystery of doubtful as a means to elicit readerly interest and to dissect social views about binary sex. Here, however, I focus on resonances between noncanonical fiction and Mademoiselle de Maupin in order to reveal how Roland Barthes's hermeneutic code, which continuously postpones the revelation of as an implement to keep us reading, can be seen as the literary equivalent to the often-frustrated medical efforts to determine true sex in living patients. My goal is to ground Mademoiselle de Maupin in a new field of inquiry and its original cultural context. Although Gautier's novel has often been interpreted in light of the preface-cum-manifesto as a reflection of the author's beliefs about art and beauty, I instead investigate Gautier's use of sexual ambiguity in relation to medical discourse and to understudied popular literature. Gautier borrows the terms of a historical debate about hermaphrodism that was raging at the same time he was writing Mademoiselle de Maupin, but his reworking of the doubtful plot participates in a time-honored tradition of literature that relies on sexual indeterminism as a means to keep the reader reading. Likely because of the ahistorical nature of the long-standing critical belief in the myth of the androgyne, coupled with the fact that Mademoiselle de Maupin describes transvestism and gender play rather than physiological hermaphrodism, much of the historical context linking the novel to cultural representations of doubtful remains unexplored. (3) I argue that Gautier's famous novel shares narrative elements with contemporaneous medical case histories while drawing key insights about bodily representation from earlier, sometimes forgotten popular literature. Gautier's hybrid novel innovates significantly with respect to its predecessors in ways that invite us to rethink the novel's stakes. These forerunners include Honore de Balzac's well-remembered works Sarrasine (1830) and Seraphita (1834), the more obscure Fragoletta (1829) by Henri de Latouche, and the now completely esoteric Clementine orpheline androgyne (1820) by J.-P.-R. Cuisin, which, contrary to conventional wisdom, claims the title of the first nineteenth-century novel about a physiological hermaphrodite. (4) Mademoiselle de Maupin recounts a relatively banal love triangle with a few crucial innovations. The Chevalier d'Albert, a young, epicene dandy, searches listlessly for his ideal woman. He eventually takes a lover whom he calls Rosette--charmingly after one of his dogs--and although she is extraordinary in every way, she nevertheless falls short of his ideal of perfection. Rosette, the reader learns, is also using d'Albert to palliate an unrequited love for her old flame Theodore de Serannes, who conveniently returns just when d'Albert and Rosette are beginning to become intolerably bored with each other. Much to d'Albert's horror, Theodore, Rosette's former love interest, embodies everything d'Albert had so ardently desired in a lover, and the latter spends the rest of the novel in anguish, hoping Theodore might be a woman and despairing that he would love Theodore even if he were not. At the same time that d'Albert bemoans his impossible love for Theodore, the reader learns that Theodore had earlier refused Rosette's affections for some still unknown and apparently insurmountable obstacle. Through Theodore's letters, we eventually discover the nature of that obstacle: Theodore is really Madeleine de Maupin in disguise. …

Théophile Gautier: Une écriture paradoxale de l’histoire by Martine Lavaud, and Corinne Saminadayar-Perrin, eds. (review)

Reviewed by: Théophile Gautier: Une écriture paradoxale de l’histoire by Martine Lavaud, and Corinne Saminadayar-Perrin, eds. Anne E. Linton Lavaud, Martine and Corinne Saminadayar-Perrin, eds. Théophile Gautier: Une écriture paradoxale de l’histoire. Bulletin de la Société Théophile Gautier, no. 34. Montpellier: Société Théophile Gautier, 2012. Pp. 302. isbn: 978-2353712946 Théophile Gautier: Une écriture paradoxale de l’histoire explores Gautier’s vexed relationship to history through a scholarly collection of essays penned by experts in the field. Although Gautier sought to distance himself from the historical pretentions of his literary contemporaries—the preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, in particular, ridicules the kitsch trappings of medieval décor that had become all the rage in fiction—a number of Gautier’s writings are also deeply invested in either past historical moments or in his immediate present. In many of Gautier’s most well-remembered fantastic tales (“Le Pied de momie,” “Arria Marcella,” and “Une Nuit de Cléopâtre,” for example) antiquity serves as creative force for narrative, although their diminutive format also breaks with the historical novel and the totalizing ambitions of writers like Dumas. In contrast, several of Gautier’s other works, such as Tableaux de siège, seem, at first, to confront contemporary history head-on. The fourteen essays comprising this collection explore Gautier’s paradoxical stance as both anti-historicist and still somehow archaeologist not only in his canonical writings, but also, and perhaps more valuably in terms of their contribution, in his lesser-known works and journalistic texts. In addition to offering an excellent introduction that details key elements of Gautier’s complex relationship to history, editors Martine Lavaud and Corinne Saminadayar-Perrin have expertly organized this issue of the Bulletin de la Société Théophile Gautier into four sections: Gautier critique: “le journaliste face à l’histoire,” “figures du passé,” “fictions,” and “contre-écritures de l’histoire.” While it would be impossible in a short review to do justice to fourteen sophisticated essays, I will endeavor to outline briefly the thesis of each. The first section confronts Gautier’s under-studied corpus of journalistic writings in order to gain insight into his evolving thoughts on contemporary society. Marie-Ève Thérenty argues compellingly that Gautier’s career as a journalist was instrumental in shaping an original poetics of historical fiction in his literary career. Similarly, Olivier Bara analyses Gautier’s theatre criticism to reveal how he relies on an enduring concept of genius in order to critique prosaic contemporary events. Marie-Hélène Girard turns to Gautier’s art criticism, explaining that his ties to romanticism allowed him to appreciate those modern works able to revive the past through impeccable technique. In perhaps the most specialized essay, Cassandra Hamrick investigates Gautier’s critique of a contemporary technique popular in the plastic arts—a choice revealing his aesthetic allegiance to more enduring classical models. Alain Vaillant opens the second section by positing a radical rupture between [End Page 305] representations of the past and present in Gautier’s fiction, which, Vaillant suggests, creates a space for art to venerate beauty as a specter of history. François Brunet traces the evolution of Gautier’s portrayal of the reign of Louis xiv, arguing that an initially critical conception of classicism as rigid and sterile gives way to a later reinterpretation of its legacy of greatness in baroque effervescence. Anne Geisler-Szmulewicz interrogates early avatars of the tyrant in Gautier’s fiction, who serve, she illustrates, as anecdotes to bourgeois mediocrity and hypocrisy. Drawing a parallel between the artist’s pursuit of transcendence above prosaic realities and the tyrant as a figure of the absolute, Geisler-Szmulewicz suggests that Gautier’s fascination for the tyrannical figure stems from his own meditations about art. Essays in the third section focus on Gautier’s body of fiction as it relates to history. Sarah Mombert investigates Gautier’s frequent use of time travel, in fiction that often satirizes contemporary society through juxtaposition and a nonlinear sense of time. Corinne Saminadayar-Perrin argues instead that Gautier deconstructs the historical, political, and moral valence of key moments or locations during antiquity...

Staging the Impossible Femme Forte in Madame de Maintenon’s Dramatic Conversations

Madame de Maintenon, King Louis XIV’s secret wife is an historic figure who remains shrouded in mystery even today largely due to the fact that much of her correspondence with the king was burned after 1713. However, what further distorted her image were the unflattering accounts written by Saint-Simon. As a result of this negative backlash, Maintenon’s contribution to female education has been forgotten. As the director of Saint-Cyr, the boarding school she founded for daughters of impoverished noble families, Maintenon placed a unique emphasis on the art of conversation, a skill that was neglected in traditional female education. Maintenon’s original conversations, morality plays loosely based on Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s conversations, were intended to teach good judgment to the older female pupils as they prepared to leave Saint-Cyr. This study of Maintenon’s conversations seeks to highlight the complexity and irony of this mysterious morganatic queen whose search for unattainable fulfillment is seen in the model woman she expects her pupils to emulate. Maintenon bases her féminin idéal on the femme forte described in the Biblical proverbs. The latter is described in the conversations as one who should take pride in her domestic duties, reject polite society, and use her knowledge only to better serve her family. Maintenon, however, cannot be seen as the perfect example of domestic bliss. Having led a very public life, her insistence on domesticity and avoidance of society life does not align itself with her own lifestyle. Ironically, she depicts marriage as slavery and men as tyrants, all the while encouraging her pupils to choose marriage as opposed to celibacy or the veil. These inconsistencies suggest that the femme forte modeled in the conversations is the woman Maintenon believed she ought to have been. Thus, through her own regret Maintenon teaches her pupils how to become a femme forte , and yet at the same time, she is as inaccessible as Maintenon herself.

Memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La Grande Mademoiselle)

In this volume, P.J. Yarrow and William Brooks offer a selected and annotated translation of the memoirs of Anne Marie-Louise de Bourbon (1627–93), known as the Grande Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle de Montpensier did not lead an ordinary life. She was the daughter of Gaston d’Orléans, the rebellious brother of the king of France, Louis XIII, and granddaughter of Henry IV, and was thus among the highest ranking royals in Europe at the time. The two scholars have gathered together the most intriguing excerpts relating directly to Mademoiselle’s personal and intimate life and have left out the lengthy descriptions of various contextual events contained in the original memoirs. The result, and the assumed goal of their project, therefore, resembles an autobiography rather than a chronicle, depicting the intimate and private life of a princess in the seventeenth century. In the first part of her memoirs (1627–59), Mademoiselle wrote about her childhood experience and youth but most notably about her role in the Fronde and her subsequent exile. Her involvement as head of her father’s troops, in his name, during the Fronde episode is only one example of what makes her character unique. Her father, Gaston d’Orléans, and the prince of Condé assembled their forces against the royal army, and above all against Richelieu; Mademoiselle was given the charge of entering Orléans and she succeeded in her mission. While she appeared to take her role seriously, this episode also entertained her a good deal, she recalled that ‘[she] was vastly amused’. Proud of her participation in the last Parisian battle of the Fronde, in which her troops contributed to saving Condé’s life, she declared boldly, ‘I had saved the army’. Her experience even encouraged her to think that, ‘any lady would command armies successfully’. This constitutes a valuable contribution to the history of the Fronde with an exciting gendered perspective. When the Frondeurs were defeated, Mademoiselle was condemned to exile, where she began to write her memoirs and reflect on her life. Away from court, she also had time to supervise the management of her estates. Her immense wealth—she was one of the wealthiest individuals in the kingdom—most definitely contributed to her autonomy. Several extracts highlight her supervision of her estates and emphasize her managerial skills and duties.