Wednesday 19th - Garance Auboyneau (Magdalen College, Oxford)

Myth and stereotype : the Histoire des favorites by Anne de La Roche-Guilhen as a test-case

Garance Auboyneau

17:00 - 18.30
St John’s College

FOLLOWED BY WELCOME DRINKS

Histoire des favorites 1697

Paper and Discussion 


Garance began her paper with a précis of Anne de La Roche-Guilhen's collection of nouvelles, Histoire des Favorites. In the book, each nouvelle is centred on the life of a particular royal or papal 'favorite' (or mistress) and accompanied, depending on the edition of the text, by a corresponding portrait (see above for an example). After an analysis of a selection of these images, Garance sketched the political, social, and religious context of the collection and discussed the relationship between stereotypes of favourites and the 'official' mythopoeia of the Roi-Soleil, Louis XIV. An enthusiastic discussion followed, in which issues such as La Roche-Guilhen's fictional and non-fictional sources, historical parallels of the text in England, the place of male 'favoris', and the distinction between 'myth' and 'stereotype' were raised by the seminar participants.  


The session was followed by a wine reception to welcome this year's new faces. Thanks to all for the high turnout and to Garance for her enthusiastically received paper! 


Abstract

According to Ruth Amossy, in "Idées Reçues", myths are not eternal, but historical.  Stereotypes can become myths, but myths can also become stereotypes. The "Histoire des favorites", by the prolific Huguenot writer Anne de La Roche-Guilhen (1644-1707), seems to corroborate this claim.

Anne de La Roche-Guilhen's Histoire des Favorites stages royal mistresses, or "favorites", from the past, and describes the loves of many monarchs, from kings, to sultans, and popes. This collection inherits from the tradition of Boccaccio's "Famous Women" and its structure and stories are often close to those of Madame de Villedieu's "Annales Galantes". At the same time, the Histoire des Favorites is a fiercely satirical book criticizing, like many Huguenot pamphlets, Rome and the absolute monarchy. Most importantly, the Histoire des Favorites is the first book to establish, in its very title, the "favorite" as a generic term – a category likely to allow stereotypes. 

If there is indeed a myth of the "favorite", created through the representation of Louis XIV's loves, Anne de La Roche-Guilhen refuses to take part in it, and this paper aims to show that her input is determinative in the evolution of the figure of the "favorite". I propose to question the way in which La Roche-Guilhen's characters – sometimes good, often evil, always beautiful –  allow for a stereotypical construction of the "favorites" which, in turn, provides a foundation for political and religious discourses.

Garance Auboyneau is a third year D. Phil. candidate in Medieval and Modern Languages, at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. She is supervised by Prof. Alain Viala and Dr. Wes Williams and works on the representation of the “favorite” under the reign of Louis XIV; her thesis is entitled "Mises en scène de la favorite dans la littérature du Grand Siècle (1661-1715)".

garance.auboyneau at mod-langs.ox.ac.uk