Literary Salon
A literary salon is a gathering of men and women of letters occurring regularly in an intellectual environment, often mundane, to discuss current events from the period, philosophy, literature, morals, etc.. Before the nineteenth century , one sees such social gatherings, circle, or bubble coterie of madmen.
Before the reign of Louis XIV , not existed before but shows literary groups. The most famous was that of Malherbe which Boileau greeted the advent. This show was deemed not to help but to destroy his contemporaries. For example, Racan , seeing that Malherbe had dropped about every other page of a book recently released, was imprudent enough to ask if everything else was good. This, at first taken aback, spent the first hour of their meeting to delete all the pages that had escaped the first massacre.
Then there was until the early nineteenth century , many meetings of minds rather elite or people taking the "polite society", which formed many centers, homes whose literary knowledge is essential to capture in its details and nuances in the history of literature. As the literary salons were almost always headed by women, the story of the first can be considered independently of seconds that distinguished the spirit, taste and tact.Pour help run their shows they employed servants dressed e jackets and white berets to help serve drinks, books ... In addition they pay a philosopher to start debates, discussions, present books and bring the participants.
It is in their living room that has grown accustomed to the conversation, and was born the art of conversation characteristic of French society. These shows where we talked of beautiful things in general, and especially things of the mind exercised a considerable influence on the manners and literature. The first meeting of this kind was that of the Hotel de Rambouillet , whose formation dates back to 1608 and lasted until the death of his grandmother, Catherine de Rambouillet , called " Arthenice "in 1659. This show brings together the major writers of the time: Malherbe , Racan , Vaugelas , Cars , Corneille , La Rochefoucauld , Madame de Sevigne , Madame de La Fayette , etc..
The second literary salon to emerge was that of Conrart dates only from 1629. Despite this, as it was a living man, this meeting became literary private, after a few years, under the protection of Richelieu , and despite some resistance, with Boisrobert and Chaplain , an official body which is exited the French Academy.
Towards the middle of the seventeenth century , the abbot of Aubignac was a literary meeting he would also be an Academy. He wrote about this a speech to the king on the establishment of a second academy in the city of Paris (1664) who sought the title of "Royal Academy", but neither the King nor the ministers took charge of these set ambitious yet backed dolphin, protector of the abbot.
Madeleine de Scuderi created in 1652 his own literary salon. Most of the celebrities of the time honored regularly "Saturday Mademoiselle de Scuderi" of their gallant and erudite conversations.
Scarron , whose style burlesque was a milestone as far as its epigrams often acerbic have survived to us, opened at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV, a salon which acquired a high profile after his marriage to Franoise d'Aubign , future Madame de Maintenon, then aged sixteen. His friendship with Ninon de l'Enclos , she took him under his protection, and the lightness of their youth quickly attracted the fashionable and the wits and finally the intellectual elite of the time.
The eighteenth century was the lounge of Baron d'Holbach , "the first steward of philosophy" in which met Diderot , d'Alembert , Helvetius , Marmontel , Raynal , Grimm , the Abbe Galiani , etc.. We can say that the Encyclopaedia was born in this meeting, as Rousseau , called after his break with the Enlightenment , the club Holbachique, which Morellet , who also had his own circle, wrote that "It said things to a hundred times down the thunder on the house, if he fell for it. "
A famous salon, nineteenth century was that of Charles Nodier the library of the Arsenal found themselves where the men most illustrious in the world of literature and art that France has produced during the nineteenth century. Upon arrival to the post of librarian of Sir, to replace Father Grosier , Nodier led to Arsenal's brilliant galaxy of writers and artists of the romantic school, who found in their eldest twenty to thirty years, a guide and support. Victor Hugo , Lamartine , Alfred de Musset , Alexandre Dumas , Balzac , Sainte-Beuve , Alfred de Vigny , Emile Deschamps , Jules Janin , Eugene Delacroix , the Johannot brothers , Robert-Fleury , Liszt , Amable Tastu and many others were regulars of this show on the first floor of the Arsenal.
Under the Third Republic in Paris, many literary salons were born: that of Princess Mathilde , Countess Potocka of Juliette Adam , of Genevieve Halevy or Rosalie von Gutmann , Countess of Fitz-James. You would meet with men of letters such as Marcel Proust, Paul Bourget , Paul Hervieu, Jules Lemaitre, Robert de Montesquiou or Maupassant.
Bibliography
- (In) Stephen Kale, French Salons, High Society and Political sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848, The Johnson Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 2004. ( ISBN 9780801877292 )
- Lilti Antoine Le Monde des salons. Sociability and worldliness in Paris in the eighteenth century, Paris, Fayard, 2005 ( ISBN 9782213622927 )
- Anne Martin-Fugier, Les Salons of the Third Republic, ed. Perrin, 2003.
- Gerald Leroy, Julie Bertrand Sabiani, literary life in the Belle Epoque ", Presses Universitaires de France, 1998 Model: ISSBN
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