Love in the Salons: a Glimpse

29 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Comedy, French Literature, Literature, Love

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Il Pastor Fido, la carte de Tendre, la Guirlande de Julie, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Préciosité, Salons

Other than polite and witty conversation, the main activity of salonniers and salonnières (salonists) was writing. They had been influenced by Giovanni Battista Guarini’s (1538-1612) Il Pastor Fido (1590), a pastoral tragicomedy, and Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée (1607-1628), a lengthy novel featuring shepherds and shepherdesses living in bucolic settings resembling Il Pastor Fido‘s Arcadia.

Salonniers and salonnières wrote abundantly and love was their favourite topic. Among the books they wrote, we know about La Guirlande de Julie. It was a gift to Julie d’Angennes, Madame de Rambouillet’s daughter, and contained sixty-two madrigals each of which compared Julie to a flower. According to the rules of Préciosité, a movement born in Salons, women looked upon themselves as precious or précieuses. Moreover, Préciosité had banished unrefined behaviour, in general, and unrefined courtship, in particular. So the Duc de Montausier courted Julie d’Angennes for fourteen years before she consented to marry him.

— Carte du Tendre (the map of love)

This map was included in Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s novel: Clélie.

Moreover, as we will now see, love was subjected to various rules. For instance, Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) described the towns, villages and rivers of her Arcadia, called Tendre. A map of the pays de Tendre was actually designed. It was probably engraved by François Chauveau (1613-1676).

Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) had been a member of l’Hôtel de Rambouillet, the first famous salon of seventeenth-century France. But as the Marquise de Rambouillet grew older, salonniers and salonnières started to gather every Saturday at the home of Madeleine de Scudéry whose pseudonym was Sappho. Thus was born the Société du samedi (Saturday Society). It flourished during the second half of the seventeenth century, called le Grand Siècle (the Great Century), the age of Louis XIV (1638-1715), the Sun King.

Sappho was well educated and a prolific writer. Madeleine de Scudéry’s longest work is Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (10 vols., 1648–53), but la Carte de Tendre was featured in Clélie (10 vols., 1654–61).

Clearly outlined on the Carte de Tendre are three forms of love each depicted as towns on the side of three rivers: Inclination (inclination), Estime (esteem) and Reconnaissance (gratitude). So love had three forms: inclination, estime, reconnaissance. There were villages along the way, all of which were allegorical: Jolis-vers (lovely poems), Billet-doux (love letter) and others.

If lovers allowed themselves to enter untamed passion, they sailed on a dangerous sea, called Mer dangeureuse. However, if passions were restrained, love could be a source of happiness. Interestingly, although she had a gentleman-friend, Paul Pelisson, Mademoiselle de Scudéry never married.

As may be expected, Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s Carte de Tendre was satirized. In fact, Molière (1622-1673) wrote his first Parisian play on the Précieuses: Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). By 1659, the Précieuses had much too high an opinion of themselves. Molière’s comedy was a slight blow to the movement, but the one-act play was a great success and Molière went on to bigger and better things, including a personal friendship with Louis XIV.

Passions were abundantly discussed in seventeenth-century France. Both Descartes and Pascal contributed a treatise on passion. Descartes wrote a treatise on the Passions de l’âme (The Passions of the Soul) and Pascal, a Discourse on the Passion of Love.

However, passionate love was never so dangerous than in Madame de La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678), a psychological novel in which love is viewed as a source of endless pain. It feeds on jealousy as does Phèdre’s love for Hippolyte. Interestingly, dramatist Jean Racine‘s (1639-1699) Phèdre, a tragedy, was first performed in 1678, the year Madame de La Fayette (1634-1693) published, anonymously, La Princesse de Clèves.

RELATED ARTICLES

Molière’s “Précieuses ridicules” (7 October 2011)
The Salons: la Guirlande de Julie (2 October 2011)

Sources and Resources

Descartes’ Discourse on Method can be read online EN: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfs/descartes1637.pdf
Pascal can be read online EN: https://archive.org/stream/blaisepascal00newy/blaisepascal00newy_djvu.txt
Molière’s Précieuses ridicules can be read online FR: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5318/pg5318.html

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Airs de Cour – French Court Music from the 17th Century

Antoine Boësset

4 October 2011

WordPress

(revised; 29 July 2014)

The Salons: La Guirlande de Julie

02 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Literature, Love, Salons

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chambre bleue, feminism, galanterie, honnête homme, la Guirlande de Julie, Madame de Rambouillet, Préciosité, Salons

La Guirlande de Julie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Salons are often looked upon as a French institution when in fact Italians brought salons to France. However, although the salon was imported, it became a French institution and it never fully disappeared.

Born in Rome to Jean de Vivonne (marquis of Pisani [1530-1599]) and Giulia Savelli, Madame de Rambouillet (1588-1665) opened the first famous seventeenth-century French salon. Salons were a gathering of persons, aristocrats of all ranks, cardinals, and l’honnête homme. They were, for the most part, well-educated men and women and shared an interest in literature, philosophy and music. However, l’incomparable Arthénice, an anagram of Catherine, who married Charles d’Angennes, marquis de Rambouillet (1577–1652) also turned the salon into a room.

Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, lived in a private house, l’Hôtel de Rambouillet, rue Saint-Honoré, but l’Hôtel moved to rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre in 1618. She received her distinguished guests in a blue room: la chambre bleue d’Arthénice. Arthénice’s guests gathered in a ruelle, perhaps a side of the bed. Beds were not as they are today. They were canopy beds featuring sumptuous drapes that were drawn closed at night, especially on wintry days.

Salons are remembered as places that did not admit anything crude. Only the purest French could be spoken in a salon and one’s manners had to be refined. A male guest was, at the very least, an honnête homme French galanterie goes back to courtly love, but reached a summit in seventeenth-century French salons.

But later in the seventeenth-century, they were rooms where people made believe they were not what they seemed. The salonniers and salonnières, gave themselves new names and, at one point, the aficionados of salons were so influenced by Guarini’s Il Pastor fido, a pastoral set in Arcadia and published in Venice in 1590, and later, by Honoré d’Urfée’s L’Astrée (1607-1627), that they played shepherds and shepherdessess. Fantasy took over.

As well, salons are one of the birthplaces of feminism. Medieval courtly love was revived and revised to emerge as a movement called Préciosité. Women looked upon themselves as precious, hence the noun préciosité and, in some cases, kept suitors waiting for for several years. The Duc de Montausier (1610–1690), courted Julie d’Angennes (1607-1671), Madame de Rambouillet’s daughter, from 1631 until 1645, before she consented to marry him.

Out of this courtship, a book emerged, entitled La Guirlande de Julie. It was given as a present to Julie in 1641 and contained sixty-two madrigals (poems not songs), each featuring a flower. Montausier wrote sixteen of the madrigals, but the preparation of the book was a bit of a contest disguised as a game. Among the authors are Racan, Tallemant des Réaux and others. The challenge consisted in finding the best pointe or conceit, a clever and witty way of saying “little nothings.”