Lafayette’s Subtle Engagement in the Early Modern Debate on Religious Toleration in La Comtesse de Tende (1724), La Princesse de Montpensier (1662), and La Princesse de Clèves (1678) By Caroline Farrior Boone Rockefeller Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in French May 10, 2019 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Holly A. Tucker, Ph D. Lynn Ramey, Ph D. Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller, Ph D. Leah Marcus, Ph D. Copyright Ó 2019 by Caroline Farrior Boone Rockefeller All Rights Reserved ii To my daughter, Anne Winthrop Hargrove Rockefeller iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this project would not have been possible without my advisor, Holly Tucker, and her continued support, patience, tough love, encouragement, and willingness to work with me from afar. Thank you to members of my committee for your invaluable advice, and to Kathryn Wright and Elizabeth Lucia, my French professors at Rhodes College, who introduced me to La Princesse de Clèves. Thank you to my editor Emily Bartlett Hines. The support and encouragement of my immediate family has also been crucial to the completion of this project. I would especially like to thank my parents, James Buford Boone, Jr. and Carolyn Farrior Boone; my sister, Catherine Garrett Boone; and my husband, William Gordon Rockefeller. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Dedication ............................................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................v Chapter I. Introduction ...............................................................................................................................7 Conception .................................................................................................................................9 Toleration and National Identity in Sixteenth Century France ............................................... 13 Religion in the Nouvelle ..........................................................................................................19 Who were the Huguenot Others in France? ............................................................................23 Theory and Methodology ........................................................................................................25 Looking Deeper into Toleration and Tolerance ...................................................................... 27 Madame de Lafayette .............................................................................................................. 32 Situating Lafayette’s Nouvelles Within the Seventeenth Century’s Historical Writing ..........35 Chapter Breakdown .................................................................................................................43 II. Intolerance in La Comtesse de Tende (1724) ...........................................................................45 Introduction ..............................................................................................................................45 History of Tolerance in La Maison de Tende ..........................................................................50 Illegitimacy ..............................................................................................................................51 Lafayette’s Literary Revision of the Historical Honorat de Savoie .........................................52 The Comtesse’s Womb and the Comté de Tende ....................................................................53 Reading the Comtesse’s Miscarriage as Henri IV’s Erasure from History .............................57 The Comtesse’s Religion .........................................................................................................59 Political Background in the Tale ..............................................................................................60 Symbolism of the Comtesse’s Motherhood and Pregnancy ....................................................61 Two Letters, Two Approaches to the Protestant Problem .......................................................64 The Comte’s Temporary Toleration ........................................................................................67 The Comtesse’s Reaction .........................................................................................................70 Complicating the Characters of the Comte and Comtesse .......................................................73 The Tale’s Ending and the Comte’s Future .............................................................................75 III. Failed Foray in Religious Toleration in La Princesse de Montpensier (1662) ........................80 The Plot Line ............................................................................................................................81 The Significance of the Name Montpensier ............................................................................83 The Tale’s Political Background .............................................................................................86 v Proven Loyalties ......................................................................................................................87 The Prince de Montpensier has No Control Over His Home ..................................................96 Refuting the Sedition Narrative: Chabanes’s Extreme Loyalty ...............................................99 The Breakdown of Hospitality ...............................................................................................111 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................118 IV. A Glimpse at Toleration in La Princesse de Clèves (1678) ..................................................121 Personal Predicaments, National Dilemmas ..........................................................................125 Clèves as Protestant, Nemours as Catholic ............................................................................128 Names of Clèves ....................................................................................................................130 Henri II’s and Louis XIV’s Religious Agendas in the 16th and 17th centuries ......................132 Madame de Clèves as an Outsider at Court ...........................................................................134 Religious Difference as a Disease ..........................................................................................137 The Prince as Agent and Victim ............................................................................................137 Past Critical Perspectives .......................................................................................................139 Clèves as a Pastoral Figure ....................................................................................................141 Pacts of Friendship .................................................................................................................149 Suffering Clèves .....................................................................................................................151 Clèves’s Death Offers Theoretical Perspective .....................................................................157 Madame de Clèves’s Final Retreat Re-envisions What It Means to be French .....................158 V. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................165 Lessons for Readers Today ....................................................................................................168 From Toleration to Hospitality ..............................................................................................170 Future Inquiries ......................................................................................................................172 Concluding Remarks ..............................................................................................................174 References ..........................................................................................................................................175 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION When Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne de Lafayette wrote her novels La Princesse de Montpensier (1662), La Princesse de Clèves (1678), and La Comtesse de Tende (published posthumously in 1724), animosity towards the Huguenots living in France was steadily increasing. King Louis XIV was enacting increasingly harsh repression of the Huguenot minority, and public debate was ongoing as to whether Protestants were dangerous heretics who needed to be expelled for the sake of the country’s welfare and morality, or whether they were better handled peacefully by tolerating their minority faith. On the surface, Lafayette’s historical fictions do not address these issues, instead featuring seemingly apolitical romance plots centering on young noblewomen. But for readers familiar with the era’s political discourse, themes of religion and tolerance are never far from the surface. These works are set in an atmosphere of either brewing or overt intolerance of religious difference within France. They are set in the mid- to late 1500s, during which time France