Intertexts

Inurtexts, Vol. 5, No. 2,2001 Les Salonnites: Reclaiming the Literary Field Aurora Wolfgang C a l i f o r n i a S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y, S a n B e r n a r d i n o French women—more than women of any other European nation— played avital role in the formation of their national literature. This distinction is owed to the unique institution of the French salon. Throughout the seven¬ teenth and eighteenth centuries, noblewomen helped to cultivate anew pubUc for literature by introducing the critique and creation of varied forms of lit¬ erature into the daily fabric of aristocratic life. As long as salon women did not trespass onto the mde-dominated realm of scholarship, society could tolerate their new role. Thus, while ParisianAcademies devoted themselves to study and publication, salons fostered an ethos of sociability in which aristocratic women distinguished themselves by cultivating an original feminine style of speaking and writing. Salonniere and novelist Madeleine de Scudery ex¬ pressed in 1646 what was to become one of the most prevalent literary com¬ monplaces of the eighteenth century: Women possess “eloquence sans art, sans travail et sans peine” [“eloquence devoid of art, work, and effort”]; Na¬ ture gave them in abundance what “study ... dearly costs” men [“l’6tude ... vendbienCher(auxhommes)”](28).i The linguistic prestige attached to women’s naturally refined use of lan¬ guage conferred upon women anew measure of authority in matters of litera¬ ture as authors, critics, and consumers.The Republic of Belles Lettres flour¬ ishedinsalonsandinspiredbothmenandwomentodevelopmoderngenres of literature such as fairy tales, portraits, literary conversations, and, most im¬ portantly, the novel. Through literary and mondain circles, aristocratic French women claimed for themselves alegitimate space in the social world in which to express their intellectual and artistic talents. As afoundational institution of the burgeoning literary field, the woman-centered salon would profoundly shape modern French literature for Current literary histories, however, continue to exclude the role of the sa¬ lon in their accounts of the development of literature in eighteenth-century France.Almostexclusiveattentionisgiventoprofessionalauthorsandtheir publishedtextstothedetrimentofthemanyculturalpracticessurroundingthe production of literature.As Margaret J. M. Ezell reminds us, what is “public” seemstodependon“publication”;thefocusonprofessionalauthorsandtheir commercial genres has obscured “any sense of athriving amateur, social liter¬ ary culture” during this transitional period (25). To take into account the many aspects of the material culture of literature would paint avery different picture of literary history, one that would include the many contributions of women. Instead, scholars continue to hold up women’s achievements against the predominantly male yardstick of publication. Salonni^res, however, worked in conjunction with male writers, and in so doing were granted au¬ thority to shape aliterary world ultimately dominated by male interests. t w o c e n t u r i e s . 1 1 4 j 11 5 Wolfgang—Les Salonnieres: Reclaiming the Literary Field The Salon as Epicenter of the Literary Field Recent scholarship in cultural history highlights how public and private institutions influenced the careers of writers and the literature they created. Such research can help us rethink the question of women’s influence by focus¬ ing on how cultural institutions rather than certain authors shape literature. In particular, Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological perspective on the cultural field of literature sheds new light on how social forces shaped the field by offering legitimacy to certain writers and genres while denying it to others. In asimilar vein, Jurgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere emphasizes how the works of communication established through salons, cafes, libraries, theaters, academies, and the press taught men and women how to express their critical reason publicly and fostered the intellectual sociability emblematic of the eighteenth century. Dena Goodman specifically contends that salon activity and all the forms of social exchange that salons promoted were central to ^e creationoftheEnlightenmentRepublicofLetters.Morethansimplyprovid¬ ing places for writers and artists to meet patrons, salons for Bourdieu “were also legitimating institutions through which those in power exerted their controlovertheintellectualworld”(196).Likewise,RogerChattierincludes salonsintheliterarypublicsphereasanewsceneoflegitimization,where writers and their works “could find independent intellectual consecration outside rule-bound institutions and established cultural bodies” (155-7). Occupying the...