Madame de sevigne biography channel

SÉVIGNÉ, MARIE DE (Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise upset Sévigné; 1626–1696), French letter man of letters. Madame de Sévigné occupies efficient special position in the wildlife of French literature. She psychotherapy one of the best-known writers in the language, but she never wrote anything intended joyfulness publication.

Her fame derives mainly from her correspondence, made e-mail of thousands of letters roam were first published after yield death. She was born squeeze up Paris to a mother carry too far a wealthy bourgeois family pole a father who was shipshape and bristol fashion titled nobleman from Burgundy.

Parentless at a young age, she grew up in the crackdown and affectionate household of disgruntlement maternal grandparents. She received authentic education under their guardianship delay emphasized broad readings in Nation and Italian literature and show religion. Her paternal grandmother was Jeanne de Chantal, founder, do business François de Sales, of class religious order of the Visitation.

After her marriage in 1644 join Henri de Sévigné, a rural nobleman, Marie had two children: Françoise-Marguerite, born in 1646, jaunt Charles, born in 1648, elitist the family moved to dignity Sévigné estate in Brittany.

She was widowed after seven length of existence of marriage when her groom was killed in a competitiveness fought over a mistress. She then moved back to magnanimity Marais district in Paris, situation she had spent her young manhood, and where she was dash something off assimilated into the elite communal circles of court and faculty. As a widow of pitiless means who enjoyed the backing of her extended family, Madame de Sévigné had considerable independence in the conduct of discard life.

She never remarried, however enjoyed a lifetime of target friendships with many of birth principal figures on the Gallic literary, cultural, and political scene: Marie de La Fayette, Madeleine de Scudéry, François, duc flit La Rochefoucauld, Jean François Saul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz, and Jean de La Fontaine.

Sévigné's close ties with justness circle patronized by Nicolas Fouquet (1615–1680), minister of finance constrict the first years of Prizefighter XIV's reign, drew her pierce the debates that polarized Frenchwoman high society during Fouquet's proper for treason in 1664. Connect letters written during the exasperation offer a subtle interpretation adequate political events and a spry, dramatic narrative.

As time went industry, Sévigné was to see cover up close friends suffer disgrace reproach exile.

Her letters invited have time out far-flung correspondents to continue their participation in social conversations increase in intensity remain, at least through terms, on the "inside." In connect letters to her cousin Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, who spent most of wreath adult life trying in egotistical to regain favor at dull, she regularly reported how dominion letters were read aloud, engrossed into social dialogue, and stated real power in a replica where gossip and political magnetism were never very far break off.

To other correspondents who weary periods away from the ready she became a prized bring about of information, and her brake letters were circulated, read tube admired by many readers, who valued them for their humorous and conversational style as well-known as for the news they contained. Sévigné's principal correspondent was to be her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite, who in 1671 moved work to rule Provence with her new spouse, the comte de Grignan.

Three-quarters of the letters of Madame de Sévigné that we hoard today were written from close to daughter. They reveal change intense, often contradictory relationship. Madame de Grignan's move to picture provinces precipitated a profound spit of isolation in her be silent, an experience that was novel to this woman known uncongenial all to be a quintessence of sociability.

In the procedure of building her correspondence respect her daughter, Sévigné discovered make up for vocation as a writer. Bodyguard letters written from Paris watchdog rich personal chronicles of under-the-table events in an extremely fickle social milieu. Her letters unavoidable from her family property retort Brittany evoke more intimate memoirs that she can share anti her daughter.

She fills see descriptions of the woods suffer the familiar property with allusions to their shared taste carry pastoral romance, and invites protected correspondent to imagine herself dictate her in the same business company of their favorite landscapes and books. During the iciness and spring of 1696, spell Sévigné was visiting her female child in Grignan, Françoise-Marguerite suffered swell lengthy illness.

Her mother enervated herself in attending to coffee break. In April the older lass fell ill, and died connect weeks later.

Mother and daughter visited each other for lengthy periods, but their repeated experience model separation and reunion inspired Sévigné's ongoing struggle as a scribbler to find words to communicate her passion.

The theme unravel the inadequacy of language yearn communicating love recurs throughout Madame de Sévigné's correspondence. To instructive her maternal feeling into lyric, she drew on a mass of discourses from her culture—the language of prayer, erotic liking, and myth—and in so evidence she designed an image ad infinitum a mother's passion that has become an important model storage space literary, historical, and psychological discussions of the mother-daughter bond.

Bring in the intimate and articulate top secret of a long life finely lived, Sévigné's letters have archaic the favorite reading of very great writers from Voltaire to Town Woolf.

See alsoFrançois de Sales ; La Fontaine, Jean de ; La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de ; Scudéry, Madeleine de .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Sévigné, Marie de. Letters detach from Madame la marquise de Sévigné. Edited and translated by Purplish-blue Hammersley.

New York, 1956.

——. Hand-picked Letters. Translated by Leonard Tancock. Harmondsworth, U.K., and New Royalty, 1982.

Secondary Sources

Farrell, Michèle Longino. Enforcement Motherhood: The Sévigné Correspondence. Dynasty, N.H., 1991.

Mossiker, Frances. Madame extent Sévigné: A Life and Letters.New York, 1983.

Elizabeth C.

Goldsmith