Catherine Bernard

Entry by [Derval Conroy]], 2005

Although her date of birth is traditionally accepted as 1662 -a certain amount of uncertainty and ignorance surrounds the establishment of crucial dates, and crucial events, in Catherine Bernard's life-, it has recently been convincingly argued by Catherine Plusquellec and Franco Piva that she was born on 24 August 1663, into the prosperous and cultivated milieu of the Protestant bourgeoisie of Rouen. It appears that she moved to Paris some years before 1685. Evidence in the Mercure galant of October of that year implies that she converted to Catholicism some days before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Following a tentative start with the novel Fédéric de Sicile (1680), and possibly with Le Commerce galant (1682), recently attributed jointly to her and to Jacques Pradon, Bernard's literary career flourished from 1687 onwards. Over the following twelve years, she produced three nouvelles, two tragedies and a considerable volume of poetry. Both tragedies, performed at the Théâtre Français, were highly successful: Laodamie enjoyed an initial run of twenty-two performances and Brutus of twenty-five performances. During this period, she was awarded three times the Académie française prize for poetry (1691, 1693, 1697), and a further three times the prize for poetry offered by the Académie des Jeux Floraux de Toulouse (1696, 1697, 1698). In 1699, Bernard was received into the Académie des Ricovrati of Padua, under the name Calliope, the Invincible. From 1691 onwards, the year in which she was awarded a pension of 200 écus from the king, Bernard enjoyed a certain amount of court patronage, particularly that of Mme de Pontchartrain. This patronage and her association with the increasingly dévot milieu of the fin-de-siècle court may have played a role in, first, her decision to cease writing for the theater, and later her complete departure from all public activity. From 1698 onwards, Bernard ceased to publish her work, although she continued to write occasional poetry. Little is known of the last fourteen years of her life. She died in obscurity in Paris on 6 September 1712.

Although it was primarily as a poet that she was known to her contemporaries, it is her prose and theater which have excited the most interest in recent years. The pessimistic world view and fatalistic conception of love as disorder which informs Bernard's work situate her clearly in the same literary tradition as Racine and Lafayette. However, her prose work has also been increasingly seen as providing an important link with the later ethic of eighteenth-century sensibilité. Of her two plays, Laodamie is the more overtly innovative, incorporating as it does an eloquent dramatisation of the ambiguity inherent in the concept of female sovereignty.

Catherine Bernard's literary reputation has traditionally been dogged by her alleged association, or blood tie, with two leading male literary figures. For some, she is Corneille's niece, and hence Fontenelle's cousin, although there is no evidence to substantiate this claim. For others, chief among them Alain Niderst, a considerable part of Bernard's work was written by Fontenelle. While there is no doubt that Fontenelle may have played the common role of mentor to the young writer, no concrete evidence exists to indicate the extent of any would-be collaboration, which was first evoked in the 1730s, at the time of a literary controversy involving Voltaire. Following comments in the Mercure galant that Voltaire's own Brutus (1730) borrowed extensively from Bernard's play, and was inferior in quality to hers, it appears that Voltaire partisans set about denigrating her reputation, in order to deflate such claims. In 1751 Voltaire himself attributed the greater part of Bernard's Brutus to Fontenelle. Chiefly since the 1980s, Bernard has inspired over twenty-five articles from seventeenth-century specialists, and at least three doctoral theses. Analysis of her work also features in broader book-length studies and theses concerning women writers. Up until recently, the only works of Bernard readily available (outside specialist libraries) were the 1979 Slatkine reprints of Eléonor d'Yvrée and Inès de Cordoue, both with prefaces by René Godenne. This situation changed in the 1990s with the inclusion of Laodamie in Perry Gethner's Femmes dramaturges en France (1650-1750): Pièces choisies, and most particularly with the championing of her work by Franco Piva, editor of her complete works.

Works

- 1680 : Fédéric de Sicile, Paris, Jean Ribou et Lyon, Thomas Amaulry -- Oeuvres, voir infra.
- 1682 : Le Commerce galant ou Lettres tendres et galantes de la jeune Iris et de Timandre, Paris, Jean Ribou (collaboration incertaine de Jacques Pradon) -- Éd. Franco Piva. Fasano, Schena et Paris, Nizet, 1996.
- 1683-1709 : Poésies -- Oeuvres, voir infra.
- 1687 : Les Malheurs de l'amour. Première nouvelle. Eléonor d'Yvrée, Paris, Michel Guérout -- in Raymond Picard et Jean Lafond assisté de Jacques Chupeau (éd.), Nouvelles du XVIIe siècle. Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1997.
- 1689 : Le Comte d'Amboise, Paris, C. Barbin -- in Marc Escola (éd.),Nouvelles galantes du XVIIe siècle. Paris, GF-Flammarion, 2004.
- 1689 : Laodamie, reine d'Épire (trag. en 5 actes, en vers), in Théâtre françois, ou Recueil des meilleures Pièces de Théâtre, Paris, Pierre Ribou, 1735, t.V, p.525-622 (l'édition de Paris, 1689, encore citée au XVIIIe s., est introuvable). Comédie-Française (Paris, théâtre du Guénégaud), 11 février 1689 -- in Perry Gethner (éd.), Femmes dramaturges en France (1650-1750). Pièces choisies, t.1. Paris, Seattle, Tübingen, coll. Biblio 17, 79, 1993.
- 1690 : Brutus(trag. en 5 actes, en vers), Paris, la veuve de Louis Gontier, 1691. Comédie-Française (Paris), 18 décembre 1690 -- Oeuvres, voir infra.
- 1696 : Inès de Cordoue. Nouvelle espagnole, Paris, Martin Jouvenel et George Jouvenel -- in Marc Escola (éd.),Nouvelles galantes du XVIIe siècle. Paris, GF-Flammarion, 2004.
- 1696 : «Le prince Rosier», in Inès de Cordoue, voir supra.
- 1696 : «Riquet à la Houppe», in Inès de Cordoue, voir supra.
- 1696 : Histoire de la Rupture d'Abénamar et de Fatime, publiée avec Inès de Cordoue, voir supra.
- Oeuvres, éd. Franco Piva, t.1, Romans et nouvelles, Fasano/ Paris, Schena/Nizet, 1993; t.2, Théâtre et poésie, Fasano/Paris, Schena Editore/Didier Érudition, 1999.

Attributions incertaines :
- 1695 : Bradamante(trag. en 5 actes, en vers), Paris, chez Michel III Brunet, 1696. Théâtre de la rue des Fossés Saint-Germain (Paris), 18 novembre 1695. Cette pièce, habituellement attribuée à Thomas Corneille, est attribuée à Catherine Bernard par Pierre-François Godar de Beauchamps dans ses Recherches sur les théâtres de France (Paris, Prault, 1735, t.2, p.276) sans que l'auteur ne cite aucune source. Cette attribution est parfois évoquée par d'autres auteurs qui s'appuient sur Beauchamps.
- 1686 : Relation de l'isle de Bornéo, «Nouvelles de la République des lettres», janvier 1686. Ce récit, habituellement attribué à Fontenelle est, d'après certains biographes, de la main de Catherine Bernard (voir, par exemple, Haag, La France protestante, 1846-1859). Selon d'autres (par exemple, Catherine Plusquellec et Alain Niderst), il est possible que ce soit le fruit d'une collaboration entre les deux.

Choix bibliographique

- Goldwyn, Henriette. «Catherine Bernard ou la voix dramatique éclatée», in Roger Duchêne et Pierre Ronzeaud (dir.), Ordre et Contestation au temps des classiques. Paris/Seattle/Tübingen, Biblio 17, 1992, t.I, p.203-211.
- Kelley, Diane Duffrin. «Codes of conduct in Catherine Bernard's Le Comte d'Amboise: a courtois or gallant hero?». Dalhousie French Studies, 66, 2004, p.3-10.
- Piva, Franco (éd.). Introduction aux Oeuvres...,voir supra(Oeuvres).
- Poulouin, Claudine. «Brutus ou la vertu lassée: l'écriture de l'histoire dans le Brutus de Catherine Bernard», in Franco Piva (dir.), Bruto il maggiore nella letteratura francese e dintorni. Fasano, Schena Editore, 2002, p.125-139.
- Vincent, Monique. «Les deux versions de Riquet à la Houppe: Catherine Bernard (mai 1696), Charles Perrault (octobre 1696)». Littératures classiques, 25, 1995, p.299-309.

Selected bibliography

Selected bibliography of images

Reception