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Précieuses
The French literary style called ''préciosité'' (, ''preciousness'') arose in the 17th century from the lively conversations and playful word games of ''les précieuses'' (), the intellectual, witty and educated women who frequented the salon of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet. Her ''Chambre bleue'' (the "blue room" of her ''hôtel particulier'') offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionalism and coarse manners of the royal court during the regency of Louis XIV. One of the central figures of the salon that gathered at the '' Hôtel de Rambouillet'' was Madeleine de Scudéry. She wrote voluminous romance novels that embodied the refinements of ''preciosité'' including the concepts of feminine elegance, etiquette and courtly Platonic love that were hugely popular with female audiences, but scorned by most men, including Molière, who satirized the ''précieuses'' in his comedy ''Les Précieuses ridicules'' (1659). The "questions of love" t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Précieuses Ridicules
''Les Précieuses ridicules'' (, ''The Absurd Précieuses'' or ''The Affected Ladies'') is a one-act satire by Molière in prose. It takes aim at the '' précieuses'', the ultra-witty ladies who indulged in lively conversations, word games and, in a word, ''préciosité'' (preciousness). ''Les Précieuses ridicules'' is a biting comedy of manners that brought Molière and his company to the attention of Parisians, after they had toured the provinces for years. The play received its Paris premiere on 18 November 1659 at the Théâtre du Petit-Bourbon. It seems not to have been staged before that in the provinces. It was highly successful and attracted the patronage of Louis XIV to Molière and company. ''Les Précieuses ridicules'' still plays well today. Plot Magdelon and Cathos are the aspiring ''précieuses'', two young women from the provinces who have come to Paris in search of love and ''jeux d'esprit''. Gorgibus, the father of Magdelon and uncle of Cathos, decides they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherine De Vivonne, Marquise De Rambouillet
Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet (1588 – 2 December 1665), known as Madame de Rambouillet, was a society hostess and a major figure in the literary history of 17th-century France. {{French literature sidebar Life Born in Rome, she was the daughter and heiress of Jean de Vivonne, marquis of Pisani, and Giulia Savelli, who belonged to a noble Roman family. She was married at the age of twelve to Charles d'Angennes, ''vidame du Mans'', and in 1612, ''marquis de Rambouillet''. They had seven children, two sons and five daughters. The young, beautiful and witty marquise found the coarseness and intrigues of the French court little to her taste and, in 1620, she began to gather around her the circle that gave its renown to her salon. She and her husband had taken residence in Paris at the Hôtel Pisani, later renamed ''Hôtel de Rambouillet'', and which she restored between 1618 and 1620. It was situated ''rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre'', between the Louvre and the Tuileri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets, and more. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today. His influence is such that the French language is often referred to as the "language of Molière". Born into a prosperous family and having studied at the Collège de Clermont (now Lycée Louis-le-Grand), Molière was well suited to begin a life in the theatre. Thirteen years as an itinerant actor helped him polish his comedic abilities while he began writing, combining Commedia dell'arte elements with the more refined French comedy. Through the patronage of aristocrats includi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hôtel De Rambouillet
The Hôtel de Rambouillet, formerly the Hôtel de Pisani, was the Paris residence of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, who ran a renowned literary salon there from 1620 until 1648. It was situated on the west side of the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, just north of Marie de Rohan's Hôtel de Chevreuse, in a former quarter of Paris (demolished during the 19th century), located between the Louvre and Tuileries palaces, near the then much smaller Place du Carrousel, in the area of what was to become the Pavillon Turgot of the Louvre Museum. Members of her salon, received in the intimacy of her ''Chambre Bleue'', admitted to the ''ruelle''—the space between her daybed and the wall of the alcove— represented the flower of contemporary French literature, fashion, and wit, including Madame de Sévigné, Madame de La Fayette, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, the Duchesse de Longueville, the Duchesse de Montpensier, Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, Bossuet, Jean Chapelain, Corne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madeleine De Scudéry
Madeleine de Scudéry (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer. Her works also demonstrate such comprehensive knowledge of ancient history that it is suspected she had received instruction in Greek and Latin. In 1637, following the death of her uncle, Scudéry established herself in Paris with her brother, Georges de Scudéry, who became a playwright. Madeleine often used her older brother's name, George, to publish her works. She was at once admitted to the Hôtel de Rambouillet coterie of préciosité, and afterwards established a salon of her own under the title of the ''Société du samedi'' (''Saturday Society''). For the last half of the 17th century, under the pseudonym of Sapho or her own name, she was acknowledged as the first bluestocking of France and of the world. She formed a close romantic relationship with Paul Pellisson which was only ended by his death in 1693. She never married. Biography Born a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippe Quinault
Philippe Quinault (; 3 June 1635 – 26 November 1688), French dramatist and librettist, was born in Paris. Biography Quinault was educated by the liberality of François Tristan l'Hermite, the author of ''Marianne''. Quinault's first play was produced at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, when he was only eighteen. The piece succeeded, and Quinault followed it up, but he also read for the bar; and in 1660, when he married a widow with money, he bought himself a place in the ''Cour des Comptes''. Then he tried tragedies (''Agrippa'', etc.) with more success. He received one of the literary pensions then recently established, and was elected to the Académie française in 1670. Up to this time he had written some sixteen or seventeen comedies, tragedies, and tragi-comedies, which began at the ''Hôtel de Bourgogne'' in 1653, and of which the tragedies were mostly of very small value and the tragi-comedies of little more. But his comedies—especially his first piece ''Les Riv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madame D'Aulnoy
Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy (1650/1651 – 14 January 1705), also known as Countess d'Aulnoy, was a French author known for her literary fairy tales. When she termed her works ''contes de fées'' (fairy tales), she originated the term that is now generally used for the genre. Biography D'Aulnoy was born in Barneville-la-Bertran, in Normandy, as a member of the noble family of Le Jumel de Barneville. She was the niece of Marie Bruneau des Loges, the friend of François de Malherbe and of Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac. In 1666, she was given at the age of fifteen (by her father) in an arranged marriage to a Parisian thirty years older— François de la Motte, Baron d'Aulnoy, of the household of the Duke of Vendôme. The baron was a freethinker and a known gambler. In 1669, the Baron d'Aulnoy was accused of treason (speaking out against imposed taxes by the King) by two men who may have been the lovers of Mme d'Aulnoy (aged nineteen) and her mother, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyrano De Bergerac (play)
''Cyrano de Bergerac'' is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. There was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, and the play is a fictionalisation following the broad outlines of his life. The entire play is written in verse, in rhyming couplets of twelve syllables per line, very close to the classical alexandrine form, but the verses sometimes lack a caesura. It is also meticulously researched, down to the names of the members of the Académie française and the ''dames précieuses'' glimpsed before the performance in the first scene. The play has been translated and performed many times, and it is responsible for introducing the word '' panache'' into the English language. The character of Cyrano himself makes reference to "my panache" in the play. The most famous English translations are those by Brian Hooker, Anthony Burgess, and Louis Untermeyer. Plot summary Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army, is a brash, str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lewis Seifert
Lewis Carl Seifert (born February 1, 1962) is a professor of French Literature at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Seifert holds a DEA from the Université de Paris III (1986) and a PhD from the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ... (1989). He is the author of two books; ''Fairy tales, sexuality, and gender in France, 1690-1715 : nostalgic utopias'' (Cambridge UP, 1996) and ''Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France'' (University of Michigan Press, 2009), and articles such as "Marvelous in Context: The Place of the Contes de Fées in Late Seventeenth Century France". References * {{DEFAULTSORT:Seifert, Lewis Living people 1962 births Brown University ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy Of Manners
In English literature, the term comedy of manners (also anti-sentimental comedy) describes a genre of realistic, satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660–1710) that questions and comments upon the manners and social conventions of a greatly sophisticated, artificial society. The satire of fashion, manners, and outlook on life of the social classes, is realised with stock characters, such as the braggart soldier of Ancient Greek comedy, and the fop and the rake of English Restoration comedy.George Henry Nettleton, Arthu''British dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan''p.149 The clever plot of a comedy of manners (usually a scandal) is secondary to the social commentary thematically presented through the witty dialogue of the characters, e.g. ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (1895), by Oscar Wilde, which satirises the sexual hypocrisies of Victorian morality. The comedy-of-manners genre originated in the New Comedy period (325–260 BC) of Classical Greece (510–323 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people held by an inspiring host. During the gathering they amuse one another and increase their knowledge through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" (Latin: ''aut delectare aut prodesse''). Salons in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries were carried on until as recently as the 1920s in urban settings. Historical background The salon was an Italian invention of the 16th century, which flourished in France throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The salon continued to flourish in Italy throughout the 19th century. In 16th-century Italy, some brilliant circles formed in the smaller courts which resembled salons, often galvanized by the presence of a beautiful and educated patroness such as Berta Zuckerkandl, Isabella d'Este or Elisabetta Gonzaga. Salons were an important place for the exchange of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pejorative
A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a term is regarded as pejorative in some social or ethnic groups but not in others, or may be originally pejorative but later adopt a non-pejorative sense (or List of Latin phrases (V)#vice versa, vice versa) in some or all contexts. Etymology The word ''pejorative'' is derived from a Late Latin past participle stem of ''peiorare'', meaning "to make worse", from ''peior'' "worse". Pejoration and melioration In historical linguistics, the process of an inoffensive word becoming pejorative is a form of semantic drift known as pejoration. An example of pejoration is the shift in meaning of the word ''silly'' from meaning that a person was happy and fortunate to meaning that they are foolish and unsophisticated. The process of pejoration can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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