Literary Living room

A literary living room is a meeting of men and women of letters meeting regularly, in a intellectual medium, often society man, to discuss the topicality of the time concerned, philosophy, literature, morals, etc the expression appeared at the 17th century, but one can also qualify such meetings of club, groups, even Cénacle.

Before the reign of Louis XIV, preexisted not of the living rooms but of the literary groups. Most famous was that of Malherbe whose Boileau greeted the advent. This living room was famous not to help but destroy its contemporaries. For example, Racan, indicator that Malherbe had striped approximately a page on two of a book recently left, made imprudence to ask to him whether the remainder were good. This one, initially disconcerted, spent the first hour of their meeting to cross out all the pages which had escaped with the first massacre.

There was then until the beginning of, the rather many meetings of spirits of elite or people holding at the “polished company”, who constituted as many centers, of literary hearths whose knowledge is essential to seize in its details and its nuances the history of the literature. As these literary living rooms was almost always chaired by women, the history of the first cannot be considered independently of the seconds which distinguished the spirit, the taste and tact.

It is in their living room that the practice of the conversation developed and that was born art from the talk characteristic of the French company. These living rooms where one discussed the beautiful things in general, and especially of the things of the spirit exerted a considerable influence on manners and the literature. The first meeting of this kind was that of the Hôtel of Rambouillet, whose formation goes up with 1608 and lasted until the death of its hostess, Catherine of Rambouillet, known as “Arthénice”, in 1659. The second literary living room to be born was that of Conrart goes back only to 1629. In spite of that, as it was a living room of men, this private literary meeting became, at the end of a few years, under the protection of Richelieu, and in spite of certain resistances, thanks to Boisrobert and with Chapelain, an official body from where the French Academy left.

About the middle of, the abbot of Aubignac held a literary meeting of which he wanted to also make an Academy. He wrote on this subject a Discours with the king on the establishment of one second Academy in the town of Paris (1664) which requested the title of “royal Academy”, but neither the king nor the ministers dealt with these ambitious aimings however supported the dolphin, guard of the abbot.

Scarron, whose style Burlesque made date as much as its epigram S often sour crossed the centuries to us, opened, at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV, a living room who acquired a great notoriety after his marriage with Francoise d' Aubigné, future Madam de Maintenon then sixteen years old. Its friendship with Ninon de Lenclos, which it took under its protection, and the lightness of their young age quickly attracted the society men and the beautiful spirits and finally the intellectual elite of time.

Had the living room of the baron d' Holbach, “the first Master of hotel of philosophy” at which met Diderot, of AIembert, Helvétius, Marmontel, Raynal, Grimm, the abbot Galiani, etc One can say that the Encyclopédie was born in this meeting, that Rousseau, called after its rupture with the Lumières, the “club holbachic”, and whose Morellet, which also had its own circle, wrote that “One said to it things to make hundred times fall thunder on the house, if it fell for that. ”

A famous living room, with was that of Charles Nodier with the Bibliothèque of the Arsenal where the most famous men in the world of the letters and arts found themselves which France produced during. On its arrival at the post of librarian of Sir, to replace the Coarse abbot , Nodier brought to the Arsenal the brilliant pleiad of the writers and the artists of the romantic school, who found in their elder from twenty to thirty years, a guide and a support. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, Holy-Beuve, Alfred de Vigny, Emile Deschamps, Jules Janin, Eugene Delacroix, the Brothers Johannot, Robert-Fleury, Liszt, Amable Tastu, and well of others still, was accustomed of this living room located on the first floor of the Arsenal.

See too

literary Women and living rooms
Coterie

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