LITMIR.BIZ

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and by extension the “salon,” is as much a discursive construct mythologized by writers who celebrated it as an actual space carved out by the marquise through architectural design.⁷⁶ In this respect, the “salon” is a rewriting of reality through the diffusion of textual depictions, often in letters but also in printed items such Madeleine de Scudéry’s romances, which shape and channel the hopes, anxieties, and choices of those who then seek to situate themselves within this space. Both the “court” and the “Académie française” would circulate in printed media as the sublimated images of a “real” context, whose history they tell,⁷⁷ and which they claim faithfully to imitate—in a 1678 letter to her friend Lescheraine, Madame de Lafayette famously deemed the princesse de Clèves “a perfect imitation of the Court”—but whose perfection and thus authority as institutions legislating social, cultural, and intellectual norms they in fact postulate and impose. The elevation of the “court” and the “salon” as central institutions of literary life in the mid-seventeenth century would depend on this “production of belief” through writing and print in their authority to discern and elevate the good and to exclude the bad.⁷⁸

      Which brings us to the second way in which we might understand the “literary” transformation of elite identity; that is, in terms of the growing importance of writing for those who lay claim to the distinction of being noble.⁷⁹ This development grows out of a broader phenomenon: the role played by language itself as a medium of self-expression for a “modern” aristocracy that sought to distinguish itself not only from non-elites but also from a nobility identified with an earlier age, whose coarseness and vulgarity provided a countermodel against which a new elegant “salon” society oriented itself. In the early decades of the century, Rambouillet had created her “théâtre de … divertissements” as a kind of private refuge from the barbaric court of Henri IV: “She said that she found nothing pleasant there.”⁸⁰ The refinement of the pastimes that occupied its participants compared with the amusements of the Louvre—they were the most gallant and polite, to recall Tallement—was in large part the effect of their linguistic nature; for they mobilized intellectual skills not physical dexterity, and thereby reflected an elevation of its noble practitioners who expressed themselves in elegant phrases rather than in feats of strength and prowess. Sorel registers the further development of the linguistic turn in his 1664 La bibliothèque françoise. Surveying works that “deal with [its] purity,” he represents the ascendancy of language as a distinct innovation in elite life: “Today,” he stresses, “we take those who speak French badly to be men of lowly condition and little wit.” Relative to older markers of social superiority, language imposed new imperatives on those who would fashion themselves according to the cultural ethic of mondanité: “One must learn politeness and polish in language [la politesse du langage], as much as in composure, or in the way of dressing and in everything that appears on the exterior.”⁸¹

      Sorel emphasizes speaking; but writing was a critical part of the trend. In his treatise from 1630 on “l’honnête homme,” adapted from Castiglione’s Renaissance sketch of the courtier, Nicolas Faret counsels the political and socially ambitious “to develop a good writing style, including for serious matters, for compliments, for love, and for so many other subjects the occasions for which arise everyday at the court. He continues, “those who do not have this facility can never aspire to great functions [grands emplois].”⁸² Faret admittedly focused on official kinds of writing—memoirs and letters—and considered belles-lettres—poetry and other “literary” forms—to be “more agreeable than necessary.”⁸³ Three decades later, however, Molière’s nobleman and would-be poet Oronte from Le Misanthrope would speak to the necessity of “literary” writing for those claiming a rightful place in le monde. Indeed, this is what the central character of the play, Alceste, really hates in Oronte’s sonnet; not so much the bad verse in and of itself, but the idea that he offers it as a privileged expression of his honnêteté.

      Monsieur, cette matière est toujours délicate,

      Et sur le bel esprit nous aimons qu’on nous flatte.

      Mais un jour, à quelqu’un, dont je tairerai le nom,

      Je disais, en voyant des vers de sa façon,

      Qu’il faut qu’un galant homme ait toujours grand empire

      Sur les démangeaisons qui nous prennent d’écrire.⁸⁴

      [Sir, these are delicate matters; we all desire

      To be told that we’ve the true poetic fire.

      But once, to one whose name I shall not mention,

      I said, regarding some verse of his invention,

      That gentlemen should rigorously control

      The itch to write which often afflicts the soul.]

      Ordered to testify before the King’s Marshals in a dispute that, for Oronte, has escalated into an affaire d’honneur, Alceste justifies his criticism by pointing out that he did not call into doubt Oronte’s personal credibility as an “honnête homme” in questioning his skills as a poet; after all, what could possibly be the connection?

      De quoi s’offense-t-il? Et que veut-il me dire?

      Y va-t-il de sa gloire à ne pas bien écrire?

      Que lui fait mon avis, qu'il a pris de travers?

      On peut être honnête homme et faire mal des vers:

      Ce n’est point à l’honneur que touchent ces matières;

      Je le tiens galant homme en toutes les manières,

      Homme de qualité, de mérite et de coeur,

      Tout ce qu’il vous plaira, mais fort méchant auteur.⁸⁵

      [His verse is bad, extremely bad, in fact.

      Surely it does the man no harm to know it.

      Does it disgrace him, not to be a poet?

      A gentleman may be respected still,

      Whether he writes a sonnet well or ill.

      That I dislike his verse should not offend him;

      He’s noble, brave, and virtuous—but I fear

      He can’t in truth be called a sonneteer.]

      At the same time, Alceste does not hesitate to praise other activities and aspects of the courtier:

      Je louerai, si l’on veut, son train et sa dépense,

      Son adresse à cheval, aux armes, à la danse;⁸⁶

      [I’ll gladly praise his wardrobe; I’ll endorse

      His dancing, or the way he sits on a horse;]

      not because, it would seem, Oronte is any better at these; we have no indication at all that he is a more talented horseman, swordsman, or dancer than a poet. But for Alceste these represent traditional vehicles of aristocratic self-expression and established forms for advancing claims to social and cultural preeminence. Writing poetry, on the other hand, does not: “But, gentlemen, I cannot praise his rhyme.”⁸⁷

      Signifying his preference for older practices over new and thus his outdatedness—Philinte repeatedly describes his friend as being out of touch with “the ways of the time [les moeurs du temps]”—Alceste’s antipathy correlatively measures the recent nature of writing’s rise as a medium for the projection of personal quality, contrasted against a set of more obviously traditional activities, with the startling ascendancy of this medium, its surging importance, further reflected in Oronte’s decision to take the matter before the King’s justice. Moreover, it is not only Oronte’s desire to write poetry that is in dispute but more specifically, his intention to circulate the sonnet. Oronte’s approach to the Misanthrope was not just about getting the latter’s feedback but about securing his approbation before “going public” with his verse:

      Et, comme votre esprit a de grandes lumières,

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