The Court and the City of Madrid toward the End of the 17th Century

Madame d'Aulnoy (Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy)Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
913K words
Chapters
92

Tags

Foreign Language Books World HistoryHistory and Culture Social ObservationPortrait GalleryPower GameDocumentary NarrativeTurbulent EraPalace LifeExotic CultureCultural ChangeFolk CustomsFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.La cour et la ville de Madrid vers la fin du XVIIe siècle by Madame d' AulnoyAuthor: Aulnoy, Madame d' (Marie-Catherine), 1651?-1705,Language: French, Class: DP: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Spain, Portugal, Release Date: Jun 13, 2009

Editor's review

This is Madame d'Aulnoy's French account of court and city life in late seventeenth-century Madrid, released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain electronic text. Known for travel writing and fairy tales, d'Aulnoy offers an eyewitness view of Spanish court ceremony, urban life, and social observation, part memoir and part reportage; it is primary material for understanding how a French observer of Louis XIV's era saw Spain. Two cautions: the French original has no modern translation or notes, and old spelling and long sentences add difficulty; and the author has personal views and period prejudices, so the narrative is not objective history. Best read slowly and selectively by those interested in early modern Spain, court culture, and travel writing, not as an introduction to general history.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the preface or opening passages on the occasion for writing to establish the author's identity and standpoint.
  2. Read chapters by theme—court ceremony, city observations—rather than insisting on reading straight through.
  3. Distinguish what the author saw from what she judged, and annotate biased descriptions.
  4. Use a seventeenth-century Spanish chronology and map to reduce difficulties with names and places.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this historical research or personal memoir? According to the material, it is d'Aulnoy's account of court and city in late seventeenth-century Madrid, with eyewitness observation and personal评价; it is memoir-style travel writing rather than modern academic history. Its subjective stance must be weighed.
Can I read it without knowing French? The electronic text is in French, in old typography and without modern notes. Readers without French face major obstacles; find a reliable translation or related research first, then return to key passages in the original.
What background knowledge is helpful? Knowledge of late seventeenth-century Spanish court and Franco-Spanish relations, plus basic names and places, will help. Prepare a brief chronology and a map of Madrid, and look up unfamiliar institutions and titles as needed so details do not interrupt reading.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Madame d'Aulnoy (Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy) Author · French · 1651–1705

Madame d'Aulnoy (Marie-Catherine, 1651?–1705) was a French woman writer, born Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy. She is known for her 1697 collection of fairy tales, Contes, and is credited with coining the term "fairy tale" (conte de fées); her tales circulated widely in Europe. The library holds volumes one and two of her Contes as well as Princess Belle-Etoile. She also wrote courtly novels and travel accounts set in Spain, such as The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady —— Travels into Spain and La cour et la ville de Madrid vers la fin du XVIIe siècle, which combine vivid foreign observations with narrative flair. Public information on the details of her life is limited, and existing accounts focus mainly on her literary works and influence.