Paper Topic:

The Selected Letters of Mme de Sevigne give us a glimpse of the harsh side of the 17th c in France.

mme de sevigne

2004

The VII century is a century of letters . The most famous representative of that genre is Mme de Sevigne . She brought epistolary genre into literature as a talk in written form (John L . Brown ,

.15 . As far as any woman , she is a mother by nature , and a teacher by essence . The question of influence is not examined completely . We know that her letters were present in conscience of writing and reading audience at eye level of quotations and maxims . In this respect Mme de Sevigne

being an admirer of Pascal and Montanez , shares glory of great French aphorists

Besides , her letters were recognized sources of priceless historical facts (Elisabeth Ladenson ,

.91 , completing chronicle of morals and life of the great century . That 's why her letters , actually , are a number of moralizing and historical episodes , which we 'll examine here Let 's take several selected letters and see that glimpse of the harsh side of the 17th century in France

The story , described in this letter , is quite well-known to everybody Actually , even film-producers love the story about the ideal Vatel . It happened at Chantilly in April 1671 . So , the King arrived to the castle in the evening , everything was fine : a dinner , promenade , hunting During the dinner Vatel noticed , that several tables had food enough but without roast , because there were more guests than he expected Vatel was shocked , because he was the man of honor and most of all he set a high value on is reputation 'Cela saisit Vatel il dit plusieurs fois " Je suis perdu d 'honneur voici un affront que je ne supporterai pas (This fact stroke Vatel and he told : I have lost my honor this is a disgrace which I cannot bear (Sevigne , The Letters , Paris , Sunday , April 26 (1671 ,

.120

Later he asked Gourville to help him , but his thoughts were in a whirl because of that roast . Still , the dinner passed quite well but during the evening Vatel planned to make fireworks , which failed because of strong fog . Another failure insulted Vatel and remained in his memory Early in the morning he went out to the rooms , but saw all the servants asleep- nothing was ready at all

Then after came a purveyor , who had to bring him a lot of fish for the breakfast . The purveyor brought him only two carriages of fish and said that it was all the fish . Vatel understood that his disgrace will be boundless , because the purveyor was the only one who came to the castle So , as far as he understood , there will be no fish at all . Again Vatel comes to Gourville and says that he will not survive the morning , but Gourville only laughs at him and says that everything is going to be fine

il trouve Gourville , et lui dit " Monsieur , je ne survivrai pas a cet affront-ci j 'ai de l 'honneur et de la ryputation a perdre Gourville se moqua de...

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