Everything about H Tel De Rambouillet totally explained
The
Hôtel de Rambouillet was the
Paris residence of
Madame de Rambouillet, who ran a renowned literary
salon there from about
1607 until her death in
1665. Formerly the
Hôtel de Pisani, it was situated close to the
Louvre, on the site of the
Palais Royal.
Members of her salon, received in the intimacy of her
Chambre Bleue, admitted to the
ruelle—the space between her daybed and the wall of the alcove— represented the flower of contemporary French literature, fashion, and wit, including
Madame de Sévigné,
Madame de La Fayette,
Mademoiselle de Scudéry, the
Duchesse de Longueville, the
Duchesse de Montpensier,
Jean Louis Guez de Balzac,
Bossuet,
Jean Chapelain,
Corneille,
François de Malherbe,
Racan,
Richelieu,
La Rochefoucauld,
Paul Scarron,
Claude Favre de Vaugelas, and
Vincent Voiture. They adopted for themselves the term
précieux, which became a term of abuse when satirized by
Molière in
Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). The blue stockings worn by ladies of this circle provided for three hundred years a slightly dismissive
metonymic term in English and in French ("
bas-bleus") for intellectual women.
The quality looked for in this self-defining circle was
honnêteté, a quality looked for in vain at the contemporary court, crass, ostentatious, corrupt and corrupting.
Honnêteté was a mode of restraint and
decorum, so practiced that it had become easy and as if natural, shared by aristocrats and fastidious members of the high bourgeoisie, but which couldn't readily be taught or learned. In contrast with the court, "the hôtel de Rambouillet received an
elite that chose its own members, or, more precisely, whose members recognized one another's right to belong.... The ordinary rules of civility didn't govern daily interchange. Members of the group wrote and above all talked to one another. Conversation was a sacred art, the forum in which the group developed its taste.
L'Astrée was staged as well as read; other reading included the novels of
La Calprenède and Mlle de Scudéry, which held up a mirror of this microsociety"
The
précieux refinements of the French language would find some codification in the
Dictionnaire de l'Académie française eventually published by the
Académie française, which found its start in the Hôtel Rambouillet. Words like "
celadon" to describe a certain range of pale glaucous blue-green glazes of Chinese porcelain come straight from the Hôtel de Rambouillet.
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