Précieuses

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The Précieuses (

movement. The main features of this style are the refined language of aristocratic salons, periphrases, hyperbole, and puns on the theme of gallant love. The movement was similar to the Italian marinism, Spanish culteranismo, and English euphuism.[1]

The movement arose in the 17th century from the lively conversations and playful word games of les précieuses (French pronunciation:

Louis XIV
.

One of the central figures of the salon that gathered at the

courts of love" (fictional courts which judged lovers' behavior) that were a feature of medieval courtly love
.

None of the women ever actually used or defined the term Précieuse themselves.[2] Myriam Maître has found in préciosité not so much a listable series of characteristics "as an interplay of forces, a place to confront and resolve the tensions that extended through the century, the court and the field of literature".[3] In assessing the career of Philippe Quinault, which began at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, Patricia Howard noted, "For if in French theatre in the second half of the century, women's roles are preeminent, it was the précieux movement which made them so."[4]

One préciosité parlor game, the retelling of

Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the author of Beauty and the Beast.[7] The stories tended to vary from the folk tradition, for example the characters were made to be of genteel origin.[8] Whilst the heroes and heroines of fairy tales written by the précieuses often appeared as shepherds and shepherdesses, in pastoral settings, these figures were often secretly royal or noble.[9]

The précieuses are also remembered through the filter of

Louis XIV. Les Précieuses ridicules is considered to be the origin of the pejorative
connotation of précieuse as "affected".

The phenomenon of the précieuses in establishing French literary classicism was first revived by Louis Roederer in 1838. His Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la société polie en France, evoked an atmosphere of nostalgia for the douceur de vivre of the

Ancien Régime and the aristocratic leisure of its authors, at least for the upper classes. Later, Roxane, a critical character in Edmond Rostand's 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac
, is described as a précieuse.

René Bary (died in 1680) a French historiographer and rhetorician wrote La Rhétorique française où pour principale augmentation l'on trouve les secrets de nostre langue published in Paris in 1653 for the female audience of the précieuses.

Significant authors

Footnotes

  1. ^ Baldick 2015.
  2. ^ The first use of précieuse to denote a literary patron of formidable powers of taste and judgment dates to 1654, according to W. Zimmer, Di literarische Kritik am Preciösentum 1978:51, noted in Patricia Howard, "The Influence of the Précieuses on Content and Structure in Quinault's and Lully's Tragédies Lyriques" Acta Musicologica 63.1 (January 1991, pp. 57-72) p 58, note.
  3. ^ "...Qu'un jeu de forces, un lieu d'affrontement et réglage mutuel de certaines des tensions qui traversent le siècle, la cour et le champ littéraire". Myriam Maître, Les Précieuses: naissance des femmes de lettres en France au XVIIe siècle (Paris:Champion) 1999:19.
  4. ^ Howard 1991:58.
  5. ^ Terri Windling, Les Contes des Fées: The Literary Fairy Tales of France Archived 2014-03-28 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ Terri Windling, Beauty and the Beast[usurped]
  7. ^ Paul Delarue, The Borzoi Book of French Folk-Tales, p xi, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York 1956

Sources