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== Entry by [[Mélinda Caron]], 2007 == | == Entry by [[Mélinda Caron]], 2007 == | ||
| − | Louise-Florence Tardieu Petronille | + | Louise-Florence Tardieu Petronille d’Esclavelles was born on 11 March 1726 in Valenciennes. Only daughter of Louis-Gabriel Tardieu, Baron d'Esclavelles (1666? -1736) and Florence-Angelique Prouveur de Preux (1695-1762), she moved to Paris at the age of ten, when her father died suddenly. Destitute, mother and daughter went to live with Mme Prouveur de Preux’s sister, wife of fermier Général Louis Lalive de Bellegarde, who in 1742 took the title d'Épinay. Louise Esclavelles remained in the convent from 1737 to 1744, and on 23 December 1745 she married her cousin, Denis-Joseph Lalive d'Épinay (1724-1782), after which she divided her time between Paris and the Château de La Chevrette. The couple had two children, Louis-Joseph (1746-1813) and Suzanne-Françoise-Thérèse (1747-1748). The infidelities and over-spending of her husband led Madame d'Épinay to ask for a separation of property, which she obtained on 14 May 1749. |
In 1748, she met Louis-Claude Dupin de Francueil, with whom she had two other children: Angélique-Françoise-Charlotte, the future Madame de Belsunce (1749-1813), raised in the house of Epinay, and Jean-Claude Leblanc Beaulieu (1753-1825), the future bishop, distanced from his family when he was born. It was in autumn 1751 that she met Friedrich Melchior Grimm, with whom she shared her life from 1755. In 1756, Louise d'Epinay hosted Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom she had met in 1748, in a house on the grounds of La Chevrette, at l’Ermitage. She began writing at the time an epistolary autobiographical roman à clefs,'' L’ Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant'', and she had her first texts printed in Grimm’s ''Correspondance littéraire'', a clandestine and handwritten periodical destined for the crowned heads of Europe. In November 1757, she moved to Geneva, where she remained for two years. There she befriended Voltaire and printed two collections: ''Mes moments heureux'' (1758) and ''Lettres à mon fils'' (1759). Upon her return to Paris, she met Denis Diderot and Ferdinando Galiani, secretary at the Embassy of Naples, with whom she corresponded assiduously after he was recalled to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1769. The same year, she took on the education of her granddaughter, Émilie de Belsunce. This occupation would lead to the drafting of Conversations d’Émilie, whose first edition was published anonymously in 1774. In 1771, in the absence of Grimm, Diderot was responsible for the editorial supervision of Correspondance littéraire, in which she published more than sixty articles, reviews and dialogues until her death. The second edition, revised and enlarged, of ''Conversations d’Émilie'' was published in 1781, and received the Monthyon Prize in 1783. The Academy strongly supported philosophers, and her book won the prize over ''Adèle and Théodore'' by Mme de Genlis. Louise d'Épinay died on 15 April 1783 at Chaussée d'Antin. | In 1748, she met Louis-Claude Dupin de Francueil, with whom she had two other children: Angélique-Françoise-Charlotte, the future Madame de Belsunce (1749-1813), raised in the house of Epinay, and Jean-Claude Leblanc Beaulieu (1753-1825), the future bishop, distanced from his family when he was born. It was in autumn 1751 that she met Friedrich Melchior Grimm, with whom she shared her life from 1755. In 1756, Louise d'Epinay hosted Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom she had met in 1748, in a house on the grounds of La Chevrette, at l’Ermitage. She began writing at the time an epistolary autobiographical roman à clefs,'' L’ Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant'', and she had her first texts printed in Grimm’s ''Correspondance littéraire'', a clandestine and handwritten periodical destined for the crowned heads of Europe. In November 1757, she moved to Geneva, where she remained for two years. There she befriended Voltaire and printed two collections: ''Mes moments heureux'' (1758) and ''Lettres à mon fils'' (1759). Upon her return to Paris, she met Denis Diderot and Ferdinando Galiani, secretary at the Embassy of Naples, with whom she corresponded assiduously after he was recalled to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1769. The same year, she took on the education of her granddaughter, Émilie de Belsunce. This occupation would lead to the drafting of Conversations d’Émilie, whose first edition was published anonymously in 1774. In 1771, in the absence of Grimm, Diderot was responsible for the editorial supervision of Correspondance littéraire, in which she published more than sixty articles, reviews and dialogues until her death. The second edition, revised and enlarged, of ''Conversations d’Émilie'' was published in 1781, and received the Monthyon Prize in 1783. The Academy strongly supported philosophers, and her book won the prize over ''Adèle and Théodore'' by Mme de Genlis. Louise d'Épinay died on 15 April 1783 at Chaussée d'Antin. | ||
| − | Although ''Les Conversations d’Émilie'' were well received by the public, reprinted nine times until 1822 and translated into several languages from when they were published, it is not thanks to them Louise d'Épinay secured herself a place in the history of literature, but rather through her friendship with, and estrangement from, Rousseau. It is within this context that ''L’Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant'' begun to be read in the nineteenth century. The title ''Mémoires and correspondance de Madame d'Épinay'', selected for the first, albeit truncated, edition of the text in 1818, reflected the documentary value that was first assigned to her writings. Part of her correspondence with Galiani, also published at that time, has suffered a similar fate. The name of Louise d'Épinay has also often been associated with those of | + | Although ''Les Conversations d’Émilie'' were well received by the public, reprinted nine times until 1822 and translated into several languages from when they were published, it is not thanks to them Louise d'Épinay secured herself a place in the history of literature, but rather through her friendship with, and estrangement from, Rousseau. It is within this context that ''L’Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant'' begun to be read in the nineteenth century. The title ''Mémoires and correspondance de Madame d'Épinay'', selected for the first, albeit truncated, edition of the text in 1818, reflected the documentary value that was first assigned to her writings. Part of her correspondence with Galiani, also published at that time, has suffered a similar fate. The name of Louise d'Épinay has also often been associated with those of the salonnières of the Ancien Régime, although she had never held her gatherings on one specific day in the week. Editorial work undertaken in the late 1970s on the ''Correspondance littéraire'' has revealed the importance of the Louise d'Épinay’s collaboration on this periodical. In the 1980s, it was mainly her ideas on education and women, generally opposed to those of Rousseau, which attracted the interest of researchers. There is now a new shift towards reinstating the originality of ''L’ Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant'', a work long reduced to its merely autobiographical or controversial dimension. Recognition of the literary value of Louise d'Epinay’s writings and attention to her pedagogical and philosophical ideas now fully confer on her the status of representative of the Enlightenment. |
Translated by [[Julie Robertson]] | Translated by [[Julie Robertson]] | ||
Latest revision as of 09:36, 3 May 2013
| Louise-Florence-Pétronille Tardieu d'Esclavelles | ||
| Title(s) | Marquise d'Épinay | |
|---|---|---|
| Spouses | Denis Lalive d'Épinay | |
| Also known as | Madame d'Épinay | |
| Biography | ||
| Birth date | 1726 | |
| Death | 1783 | |
| Biographical entries in old dictionaries | ||
| Dictionnaire Fortunée Briquet | ||
Contents
Entry by Mélinda Caron, 2007
Louise-Florence Tardieu Petronille d’Esclavelles was born on 11 March 1726 in Valenciennes. Only daughter of Louis-Gabriel Tardieu, Baron d'Esclavelles (1666? -1736) and Florence-Angelique Prouveur de Preux (1695-1762), she moved to Paris at the age of ten, when her father died suddenly. Destitute, mother and daughter went to live with Mme Prouveur de Preux’s sister, wife of fermier Général Louis Lalive de Bellegarde, who in 1742 took the title d'Épinay. Louise Esclavelles remained in the convent from 1737 to 1744, and on 23 December 1745 she married her cousin, Denis-Joseph Lalive d'Épinay (1724-1782), after which she divided her time between Paris and the Château de La Chevrette. The couple had two children, Louis-Joseph (1746-1813) and Suzanne-Françoise-Thérèse (1747-1748). The infidelities and over-spending of her husband led Madame d'Épinay to ask for a separation of property, which she obtained on 14 May 1749.
In 1748, she met Louis-Claude Dupin de Francueil, with whom she had two other children: Angélique-Françoise-Charlotte, the future Madame de Belsunce (1749-1813), raised in the house of Epinay, and Jean-Claude Leblanc Beaulieu (1753-1825), the future bishop, distanced from his family when he was born. It was in autumn 1751 that she met Friedrich Melchior Grimm, with whom she shared her life from 1755. In 1756, Louise d'Epinay hosted Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom she had met in 1748, in a house on the grounds of La Chevrette, at l’Ermitage. She began writing at the time an epistolary autobiographical roman à clefs, L’ Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant, and she had her first texts printed in Grimm’s Correspondance littéraire, a clandestine and handwritten periodical destined for the crowned heads of Europe. In November 1757, she moved to Geneva, where she remained for two years. There she befriended Voltaire and printed two collections: Mes moments heureux (1758) and Lettres à mon fils (1759). Upon her return to Paris, she met Denis Diderot and Ferdinando Galiani, secretary at the Embassy of Naples, with whom she corresponded assiduously after he was recalled to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1769. The same year, she took on the education of her granddaughter, Émilie de Belsunce. This occupation would lead to the drafting of Conversations d’Émilie, whose first edition was published anonymously in 1774. In 1771, in the absence of Grimm, Diderot was responsible for the editorial supervision of Correspondance littéraire, in which she published more than sixty articles, reviews and dialogues until her death. The second edition, revised and enlarged, of Conversations d’Émilie was published in 1781, and received the Monthyon Prize in 1783. The Academy strongly supported philosophers, and her book won the prize over Adèle and Théodore by Mme de Genlis. Louise d'Épinay died on 15 April 1783 at Chaussée d'Antin.
Although Les Conversations d’Émilie were well received by the public, reprinted nine times until 1822 and translated into several languages from when they were published, it is not thanks to them Louise d'Épinay secured herself a place in the history of literature, but rather through her friendship with, and estrangement from, Rousseau. It is within this context that L’Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant begun to be read in the nineteenth century. The title Mémoires and correspondance de Madame d'Épinay, selected for the first, albeit truncated, edition of the text in 1818, reflected the documentary value that was first assigned to her writings. Part of her correspondence with Galiani, also published at that time, has suffered a similar fate. The name of Louise d'Épinay has also often been associated with those of the salonnières of the Ancien Régime, although she had never held her gatherings on one specific day in the week. Editorial work undertaken in the late 1970s on the Correspondance littéraire has revealed the importance of the Louise d'Épinay’s collaboration on this periodical. In the 1980s, it was mainly her ideas on education and women, generally opposed to those of Rousseau, which attracted the interest of researchers. There is now a new shift towards reinstating the originality of L’ Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant, a work long reduced to its merely autobiographical or controversial dimension. Recognition of the literary value of Louise d'Epinay’s writings and attention to her pedagogical and philosophical ideas now fully confer on her the status of representative of the Enlightenment.
Translated by Julie Robertson
Works
- 1756-1762? : Mémoires et correspondance de Madame d'Épinay, précédées d'une étude sur sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris, Brunet, 1818 -- Les Contre-confessions. Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant, éd. Élisabeth Badinter, Paris, Mercure de France, 1989.
- 1758 : Mes moments heureux, Genève, de mon imprimerie [J.-V. C. de Gauffecourt].
- 1759 : Lettres à mon fils, Genève, de mon imprimerie [J.-V. C. de Gauffecourt] -- Lettres à mon fils. Essais sur l'éducation et Morceaux choisis, correspondance et extraits, éd. Ruth Plaut Weinreb, Concord, Wayside Publishing, 1989.
- 1769-1782 :Louise d’Épinay et Ferdinando Galiani, Correspondance, éd. Daniel Maggetti en coll. avec Georges Dulac, Paris, Desjonquères, 1992-1997.
- 1771 : «Dialogue copié d’après nature ou de l’amitié de deux jolies femmes» (diffusé en trois temps dans les ordinaires des 1er septembre, 1er octobre et 15 octobre 1771 de la «Correspondance littéraire») -- dans L’Amitié de deux jolies femmes; suivie de Un rêve de mademoiselle Clairon, éd. Maurice Tourneux, Paris, Librairie des bibliophiles, 1885.
- 1772 : «Rêve» (diffusé dans l’ordinaire du 1er janvier 1772 de la «Correspondance littéraire») -- dans L’Amitié de deux jolies femmes..., voir supra.
- 1774 : Les Conversations d’Émilie, Leipzig, Crusius.
- 1781 : Les Conversations d’Émilie, éd. remaniée et augmentée, Paris, Humblot -- éd. Rosena Davison, Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, 1996.
Mis à part le «Dialogue copié d’après nature» et le «Rêve», aucun des textes de Louise d’Épinay ayant été diffusés dans la «Correspondance littéraire» ne figure sur cette liste. Il est à noter que plusieurs n’ont pas été retenus ou n’ont pas été entièrement reproduits dans l’édition (lacunaire) du périodique qui est actuellement disponible: Grimm et al., Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, éd. Maurice Tourneux, Nendeln, Kraus Reprint, 1968 [Paris, Garnier frères, 1877-1882]. La plupart seront toutefois bientôt disponibles grâce à l’édition critique des années 1753-1773 qui est en cours de parution: Friedrich Melchior Grimm,Correspondance littéraire, éd. Ulla Kölving et Robert Granderoute, Ferney-Voltaire, Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, 2006.
Selected bibliography
- Badinter, Élisabeth, Madame du Châtelet, Madame d’Épinay ou l’ambition féminine au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Flammarion, 2006 [Émilie, Émilie ou l’ambition féminine au XVIIIe siècle, 1983].
- David, Odette,L'Autobiographie de convenance de madame d'Épinay, écrivain-philosophe des Lumières. Subversion idéologique et formelle de l’écriture de soi, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007.
- Davison, Rosena, «Madame d’Épinay and Girl’s Education», dans Femmes savantes et femmes d’esprit. Women Intellectuals of the French Eighteenth Century, dir. Roland Bonnel et Catherine Rubinger, New York, Peter Lang, 1994, p.219-241.
- Trouille, Mary Seidman, «La femme mal mariée. Madame d’Épinay’s Challenge to Julie and Émile», dans Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment. Women Writers Read Rousseau, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1997.
- Weinreb, Ruth Plaut, Eagle in a Gauze Cage. Louise d’Épinay Femme de Lettres, New York, AMS Press, 1993.
Selected bibliography of images
- 1759? : Jean-Étienne Liotard, Louise d’Épinay(pastel sur parchemin, 69 x 55 cm), Genève, Musée d’art et d’histoire.
Reception
- «Ce n’est pas dans le moment où nos pleurs coulaient encore sur la tombe de Mme d’Épinay que nous avons osé consacrer dans ces fastes littéraires le souvenir qu’elle y paraît mériter au plus respectable de tous les titres. [...] Ce qui distinguait particulièrement l’esprit de Mme d’Épinay, c’était une droiture de sens fine et profonde. Elle avait peu d’imagination; moins sensible à l’élégance qu’à l’originalité, son goût n’était pas toujours assez sûr, assez difficile; mais on ne pouvait guère avoir plus de pénétration, un tact plus juste, de meilleures vues avec un esprit de conduite plus ferme et plus adroit.» (Jacques-Henri Meister, s.t. [mort de Louise-Florence-Pétronille Tardieu d’Esclavelle, dame de la Live, marquise d’Épinay], dans Grimm et al., Correspondance littéraire, novembre 1783, éd. Maurice Tourneux, voir supra, oeuvres, t.13, p.394-396)
- «Madame d’Epinai est morte l’année derniere. C’étoit la femme d’un fermier-général qui jusqu’à l’âge de vingt-cinq ans ne s’étoit pas doutée qu’elle fut une femme d’esprit. Elle trouva un ami complaisant qui lui ouvrit les yeux sur ses moyens. De ce moment elle se met à faire vers & prose. Sa santé devint mauvaise. Elle mit cet accident sur le compte des muses. Elle accusa la gloire de lui avoir vendu bien cher ses lauriers. [...] Alors elle prit la résolution de devenir un peu célèbre. Choix sévère dans ses amis, réforme complette des adorateurs, bureau d’esprit, lectures périodiques, protection affichée aux jeunes auteurs, mépris marqué des femmes qui n’avoient que les graces d’un esprit facile & varié. À ces ridicules près accompagnés de plusieurs autres, c’étoit bien la meilleure pâte de femme! gaie, généreuse, n’ayant pas volonté, croyant aux grands, aux philosophes, & à tout ce qu’on vouloit.» (Correspondance secrète, politique & littéraire, ou Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des cours, des sociétés & de la littérature en France, depuis la mort de Louis XV, 21 avril 1784, Londres, John Adamson, 1788, t.16, p.124-125)
- «On se plaint généralement qu’il est peu de livres qu’on puisse mettre entre les mains de ceux qui sont sortis de la première enfance. Quelques-uns des écrits de madame de Beaumont, et les Conversations d’Émilie sont presque les seuls ouvrages français où la morale soit mise à leur portée.» (Marie-Élisabeth Bouée de La Fite, Entretiens, drames et contes moraux, à l’usage des enfans, Paris, Brunot-Labbe, 1820, p.vii)
- «Mme d’Épinay proved herself a philosophe in her defense of virtue, of duty, and especially of usefulness, in her writing and through her actions. She engaged in the same debates as the men philosophes; what makes them of interest today, makes her equally so and equally a philosophe.» (Ruth Plaut Weinreb, Eagle..., voir supra, Choix bibliographique, p.114)
