Précieuses
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The Précieuses (
The movement arose in the 17th century from the lively conversations and playful word games of les précieuses (French pronunciation:
One of the central figures of the salon that gathered at the
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
The précieuses are also remembered through the filter of
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
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
- Madame d'Aulnoy
- Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac
- Isaac de Benserade
- Charles Cotin
- Antoine Godeau
- Henriette-Julie de Murat
- Paul Pellisson
- Madeleine de Scudéry
- Honoré d'Urfé
- Vincent Voiture
Footnotes
- ^ Baldick 2015.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "...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.
- ^ Howard 1991:58.
- ^ Terri Windling, Les Contes des Fées: The Literary Fairy Tales of France Archived 2014-03-28 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 0-415-92151-1
- ^ Terri Windling, Beauty and the Beast[usurped]
- ^ Paul Delarue, The Borzoi Book of French Folk-Tales, p xi, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York 1956
- ISBN 0-393-97636-X
Sources
- ISBN 9780191783234.
- Howard, Patricia. "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.
- Howard, Patricia. "Quinault, Lully, and the Precieuses: Images of Women in Seventeenth-Century France." in Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music ed. Susan C. Cook and Judy S. Tsou, editors, pp 70–89. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
- Maître, Myriam. Les Précieuses: naissance des femmes de lettres en France au XVIIe siècle, H. Champion, collection "Lumière classique", Paris, 1999