Letters of Mesdames de Villars, de Coulanges and de La Fayette, of Ninon de L'Enclos

Villars, Marie Gigault de Bellefonds, marquise de,Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.9
Word count
658K words
Chapters
66

Tags

Foreign Language Books Essays and Miscellany Portrait GalleryLove EntanglementsDaily ReflectionsHeartwarming NarrativePersonal WritingSocial ObservationFemale 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.Lettres de Mmes. de Villars, de Coulanges et de La Fayette, de Ninon de L'EnclosAuthor: Villars, Marie Gigault de Bellefonds, marquise de, 1624-1706,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Jul 21, 2009

Editor's review

This volume gathers letters from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French aristocrats and salon figures, including correspondence by Madame de Villars, Madame de Coulanges, Madame de La Fayette, and Ninon de L'Enclos, offered as a French public-domain e-book by Project Gutenberg. The appeal of the epistolary form lies in its immediacy and intimacy: these are not works written for publication but the natural residue of daily exchange, emotional confidences, and social observation, allowing readers to touch the linguistic habits, codes of etiquette, and interpersonal networks of the aristocratic circles of the time. For scholars of French literature and court society, this material can be cross-checked against memoirs and novels; for general readers, it offers a slow-reading historical experience, with short, self-contained pieces that can be picked up and set down at any time. The original text is in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French, with spelling and syntax bearing the marks of the era; non-specialist readers would do well to choose an annotated edition or a parallel translation for support.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read by letter writer, concentrating first on one lady's letters to sense her tone and concerns.
  2. After every few letters, verify the people and events mentioned, gradually building a map of the social network.
  3. Do not agonize over early French spelling differences; grasp the meaning first, then return to check the original.
  4. Read alongside La Fayette's novels to observe differences in expression between letters and literary works.

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

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66

FAQ

Can I read this book without any French? The original is in French, and reading it without any foundation will be quite difficult. It is advisable to first find an annotated edition or a parallel translation, or to start with selected passages that have been translated into Chinese; if reading purely out of interest, you may first learn about these figures' lives, then use translation tools to read slowly letter by letter, focusing on grasping the tone rather than word-for-word accuracy.
What are these letters mainly about? Mostly social exchange, family matters, emotional communication, and daily observations, also involving evaluations of figures in the court and salons of the time. It is not a systematic treatise but a fragmentary record from a private perspective, valued for presenting the ways of speaking, standards of etiquette, and interpersonal relationships of the aristocratic circles of the time.
Why does reading early French letters feel difficult? Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French differs from modern French in spelling, punctuation, and syntax, and contains more long sentences and euphemistic expressions. It is advisable to slow down, grasp the general meaning paragraph by paragraph, and use biographical sketches and historical background notes; after a few letters you will gradually adapt to its linguistic rhythm.

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

Villars, Marie Gigault de Bellefonds, marquise de, Author · French · 1624–1706

Marie Gigault de Bellefonds, marquise de Villars (1624–1706), was a French letter writer. She accompanied her husband on his diplomatic mission to Spain and left behind a collection of letters; her work Lettres de Mmes. de Villars, de Coulanges et de La Fayette, de Ninon de l'Enclos embodies this literary output. Her letters largely record observations from the embassy and court society, with a delicate touch that combines historical value with literary interest, offering a vivid perspective on Franco-Spanish diplomacy and aristocratic life of the period. Public information is limited, and details of her life and the full scope of her work remain to be further examined.