Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette

18 March 1634 - 25 May 1693

Standard Name: Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine de

Birth Name: Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne

Married Name: Marie-Madeleine Lafayette

MML , writing in France in the late seventeenth century, originated there the new form of the novel: shorter, less diffuse, more vigorous in its emotional effect than the long, many-storied, courtly romances. She was chiefly admired in England for La princesse de Clèves, 1678.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Friends, Associates	Marie de Sévigné	Her close friends included the fiction-writers Madeleine de Scudéry and Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette (both of whom created literary portraits of her) and the royal mistress, Madame de Maintenon . Williams, Charles G. S. Madame de Sévigné. Twayne, 1981. 35-7
Friends, Associates	Madeleine de Scudéry	Her friends and associates included novelist Marie Madeleine de Lafayette , letter-writer Marie de Sévigné , and maxim-writer La Rochefoucauld .
Intertextuality and Influence	Amelia Bristow	The Maniac deals with the effects of the Irish Rebellion. The narrator, Albert, has gone mad after returning home to find his house sacked and wife and children murdered. His sister, Emma, also dies and...
Intertextuality and Influence	Lady Mary Wortley Montagu	Her choice of genres came from her reading in French, not English, fiction, though Louisa (one of two survivors from a cycle of tales set at the court of Louis XIV of France) also...
Intertextuality and Influence	Jane Gardam	The title given these stories may sound sentimental, but in fact it comes from a kind of cake made by a character who, when asked about her health, always replies that this is only one...
Publishing	Harriet Taylor	HT 's reviews include an appraisal of Sarah Austin 's translation Tour of a German Prince, which appeared in May 1832. Taylor, Harriet. The Complete Works of Harriet Taylor Mill. Editors Jacobs, Jo Ellen and Paula Harms Payne, Indiana University Press, 1998. 179n39 Hayek, Friedrich Augustus von et al. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor; Their Correspondence [i.e. Friendship] and Subsequent Marriage. University of Chicago Press, 1951. 40 A harsh review of Frances Trollope 's Domestic Manners of the...
Publishing	Elizabeth Griffith	EG 's version of Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette 's The Princess of Cleves. An Historical Novel is available in the Chawton House Library Novels On-line series at http://www.chawtonhouse.org/?page_id=55488. Her version of Aphra Behn 's Oroonoko,...
Textual Features	Elizabeth Griffith	EG 's collection recovers fiction of an earlier style than her own. It incorporates material from three English texts (besides the Behn , they are Penelope Aubin 's The Noble Slaves, and some of...
Textual Features	Julia Kavanagh	JK successfully blends scholarly knowledge with popular style. Her historical and critical opinions are still well worth reading. On the great length of Scudéry 's romances, she cites a contemporary reader who had reached page...
Textual Features	Sophia Lee	An Advertisement claims that The Recess is a version, in modernised English, of a manuscript memoir from the reign of Elizabeth I . It breaks new ground for the English novel in various ways: it...
Textual Production	Lady Eleanor Butler	Sarah Ponsonby bequeathed the journals to Caroline Hamilton , and Harriet Pigott therefore supposed that they were written by Ponsonby . Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, 1930, p. vii - viii; various pages. vii They have been published in several selections: by Mrs G. H. [Eva Mary] Bell
Textual Production	Cecily Mackworth	When Nathalie Sarraute argued that the novel is a dead form,CM thought of three examples to prove her wrong:Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette 's La Princesse de Clèves, Samuel Richardson 's Clarissa, and the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett . Mackworth, Cecily. Ends of the World. Carcanet, 1987. 113
Textual Production	Nancy Mitford	NM translated Marie de Lafayette 's La Princesse de Clèves. Mitford, Nancy. “Critical Materials”. Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, edited by Charlotte Mosley, Hodder and Stoughton, 1993, p. various pages. xxi Mitford, Nancy. Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford. Editor Mosley, Charlotte, Hodder and Stoughton, 1993. 175
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Ann Thicknesse	AT makes it clear she is no proto-feminist: If women are thought to possess minds less capable of solid reflection than men, they owe this conjecture entirely to their own vanity, and erroneous method of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Julia Pardoe	JP did not aim to provide a record of the Sun King's public life for statesmen and politicians; she hoped instead to depict his private humanity as it was portrayed in the personal memoirs of...

Timeline

1678

This year saw several landmark appearances in France: Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette 's La princesse de Clèves, the journal Le Mercure galant, and a new garment for women called the manteau.

ASECS (American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies), and Isobel Grundy. Email to Isobel Grundy. 11 May 2006.

Probably September 1680

Nathaniel Lee 's tragedy The Princess of Cleve was first performed.

Watson, George, and Ian Roy Wilson, editors. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Cambridge University Press, 1969, 5 vols., http://U of A, HSS Ruth N Flr 1 Ref.

Texts

Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine de. Histoire de Madame Henriette d’Angleterre. Michel Charles le Cene, 1720.

Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine de. La princesse de Clèves. Barbin, 1678.

Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine de. La princesse de Montpensier. Thomas Jolly, 1662.

Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine de. The Princess of Clèves. Translator Mitford, Nancy, Euphorion Press, 1950.

Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine de, and Pierre-Daniel Huet. Zayde. Barbin, 1671, 2 vols.