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8 - Madame de Lafayette: the birth of the modern novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2015

Brian Nelson
Brian Nelson
Affiliation:
Monash University, Victoria
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Summary

… so great was her perplexity that she resolved to avoid the very thing she perhaps most desired in all the world.

– Madame de Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves

La Princesse de Clèves (1678), by Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette (1634–93), is generally regarded by literary historians as the first modern novel in French. This may seem surprising given the novel's historical setting: the aristocratic milieu of King Henri II (reign: 1547–59) and his court. The novel's modernity consists in its unprecedented emphasis, in prose narrative, on psychological analysis, and its authentic representation of life at the royal court. Combining elements of the romance and the novella – prose genres that were previously dominant – La Princesse de Clèves created a new model for fiction: the type of psychological novel (roman d'analyse), foregrounding the inner lives of its characters and the relationships between them, that would become such an important strand of the French literary tradition. It looks forward to the fiction of Laclos and Stendhal.

The beautiful young heroine, the sixteen-year-old Mlle de Chartres, attracts much attention when she is presented at court by her mother. Her mother soon marries her to the Prince de Clèves, a man her daughter respects but does not love. No sooner is she married than she meets the Duke de Nemours, the most brilliant and attractive nobleman in the King's entourage and notorious for his affairs with women. Nemours falls violently in love with her. The princess avoids him as much as she can, but finds herself becoming irresistibly attracted to him. Forced to recognize that she is powerless in the face of her passion, and wishing to preserve her virtue by withdrawing from the court, she turns to her husband for help and confesses to him that she is in love with another man, whom she refuses to name.

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The Cambridge Introduction to French Literature , pp. 54 - 59
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Beasley, Faith E., and Jensen, Katharine Ann (eds.), Approaches to Teaching Lafayette's ‘The Princess of Clèves’ (New York: MLA, 1998).Google Scholar
Brink, André, ‘Courtly Love, Private Anguish: Madame de Lafayette: La Princesse de Clèves’, in The Novel: Language and Narrative from Cervantes to Calvino (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997; New York University Press, 1998), pp. 46–64.Google Scholar
DeJean, Joan E., Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 94–126.Google Scholar
DiPiero, Thomas, ‘A Discourse of One's Own: La Princesse de Clèves’, in Dangerous Truths and Criminal Passions: the Evolution of the French Novel, 1569–1791 (Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 194–226.Google Scholar
Howarth, W. D., ‘Mme de Lafayette (1634–93)’, in Life and Letters in France: The Seventeenth Century (London and Edinburgh: Nelson, 1965), pp. 123–33.Google Scholar
Miller, Nancy K., Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). (Chapter 1: ‘Emphasis Added: Plots and Plausibilities in Women's Fictions’.)Google Scholar
Raitt, Janet, Madame de Lafayette and ‘La Princesse de Clèves’ (London: Harrap, 1971).Google Scholar
Scott, J. W., Madame de Lafayette: ‘La Princesse de Clèves’ (London: Grant & Cutler, 1983).Google Scholar
de Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine, The Princesse de Clèves, trans. with an intro. and notes by Cave, Terence (Oxford University Press, 1992). The introduction is excellent and the notes extremely useful.Google Scholar
de Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine, The Princess of Clèves, ed. and with a revised translation by Lyons, John D. (New York: Norton, 1994). Contains a substantial anthology of contemporary reactions and modern criticism.Google Scholar

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