Marie-Catherine de Villedieu

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Marie-Catherine de Villedieu, born Marie-Catherine Desjardins and generally referred to as Madame de Villedieu (1640 - 20 October 1683) was a French writer of plays, novels and short fiction. Largely forgotten or eclipsed by other writers of the period (such as Madame de Lafayette) in the works of literary historians of the 19th and 20th centuries, Madame de Villedieu is currently enjoying a literary revival.

Marie-Catherine de Villedieu.

Madame de Villedieu was born at Alençon, the second daughter of Guillaume Desjardins and Catherine Ferrand, who worked as a ladies' maid for the wife of duke Henri de Rohan-Montbazon. After the divorce of her parents in 1655 the fifteen year old girl was taken by her mother to Paris.^[1] She came under the protection of the duchess of Rohan (thanks to the poems she presented her). Louis XIV gave Madame de Villedieu a pension of 1500 livres. She was admitted to the Academy of the Ricovrati of Padua. She died at Saint-Rémy-du-Val (Sarthe).

Madame de Villedieu was prolific in the genre of "nouvelles historiques" and "nouvelles galantes" which began to appear in France in the 1660s. An interest in love, psychological analysis, moral dilemmas and social constraints permeated these relatively short novels. When the action was placed in an historical setting, this was increasingly a setting in the recent past, and although still filled with anachronisms, these novels showed an interest in historical detail; these are generally called "nouvelles historiques". A number of these short novels recounted the "secret history" of a famous event, linking the action generally to an amorous intrigue; these were called "histoires galantes". Les Désordres de l’Amour is perhaps Madame de Villedieu's most well-known work in this genre.

Her masterpiece is perhaps the pseudo-memoir novel Mémoires de la vie d'Henriette-Sylvie de Molière, a remarkably realistic story (in the vein of a picaresque novel) recounting the economic and emotional misfortunes of a young woman in contemporary French society.

Along with her novels, she wrote three plays: the tragicomedy Manlius performed with critical success by the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1662 (the play engendered a debate between Jean Donneau de Visé and François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac concerning its historic accuracy); the tragedy Nitétis performed April 27, 1663; and the tragicomedy Le Favori, performed April 24, 1665 at Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris and June 13, 1665 at Versailles.

She died at her manor in Clinchemore in 1683.

Quotation

“

"LOVE IS THE FORCE BEHIND ALL THE OTHER HUMAN PASSIONS."

”

Works

• Anaxandre, Jean Ribou, Paris (1667)
• Fables ou Histoires allégoriques dédiées au roy, Claude Barbin, Paris (1670)
• Le Favori, tragicomedy, [s.n.], Paris ; Amsterdam (1666)
• Manlius Torquatus, tragicomedy, [s.n.], Paris (1662)
• Le Portrait des faiblesses humaines, Henry Desbordes, Amsterdam (1686)
• Recueil de poésies, C. Barbin, Paris (1662)
• Alcidamie (1661)
• Les Amours des Grands Hommes (1671), [1]
• Anaxandre. Nouvelle (1667)
• Les Annales galantes (1670)
• Les Annales galantes de Grèce (1687)
• Carmente, histoire grecque (1668)
• Cléonice ou le Roman galant. Nouvelle (1669)
• Les Désordres de l’amour (1675)
• Les Exilés (1672-1673)
• Fables, ou histoires allégoriques (1670)
• Les Galanteries grenadines (1672-1673)
• Le Journal amoureux (1669-1671)
• Lettres et billets galants (1667)
• Lisandre. Nouvelle (1663)
• Mémoires de la vie de Henriette-Sylvie de Molière (1672-1674)
• Nitétis, tragedy, 1663
• Nouveau recueil de pièces galantes (1669)
• Les Nouvelles africaines (1673)
• Le Portefeuille (1674)
• Le Portrait des faiblesses humaines (1685)
• Récit en prose et en vers de la farce des Précieuses (1660)
• Recueil de quelques lettres et relations galantes (1668)

Works available online (in French)

• Anaxandre. Nouvelle
• Fables, ou histoires allégoriques dédiées au roy
• Manlius Torquatus, tragi-comédie
• Le Portrait des faiblesses humaines
• Récit en prose et en vers de la farce des Précieuses (1660)

Notes

1. ^ Donna Kuizenga, DLB 268, p. 385.

References

• Donna Kuizenga: Madame de Villedieu. In. Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB). Vol. 268 (2002), pp. 383-390.
• Bruce Archer Morrissette, The life and works of Marie-Catherine Desjardins (Mme. de Villedieu) 1632-1683, Saint Louis, 1947.

External links

• Website Madame de Villedieu
• Bio-bibliographical entry of “Mme de Villedieu”, by Donna Kuizenga (2004), for the SIEFAR Dictionnary of Women in Early Modern France
• Micheline Cuénin, Roman et société sous Louis XIV : Madame de Villedieu (Marie-Catherine Desjardins 1640-1683), Paris, Champion, 1979, 2 t. ; on the Website Madame de Villedieu, Copyright © Editions Honoré Champion 2007
• Studies on Mme de Villedieu, in French
• Her novel Mémoire de la vie de Henriette-Sylvie de Molière on Amazon.fr
• Marie Catherine Desjardins /Madame de Villedieu (1640?-1683) Other Women's Voices

Persondata
Name	Villedieu, Marie-Catherine de
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1640
Place of birth
Date of death	20 October 1683
Place of death