MEN AND WOMEN MAKING FRIENDS IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Allyson Poska, The University of Mary Washington, USA Abby Zanger The study of women and gender offers some of the most vital and innovative challenges to current scholarship on the early modern period. For more than a decade now, “Women and Gender in the Early Modern World” has served as a forum for presenting fresh ideas and original approaches to the field. Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in scope, this Ashgate book series strives to reach beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. We welcome proposals for both single-author volumes and edited collections which expand and develop this continually evolving field of study. Titles in the series include: Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World Elizabeth Teresa Howe Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World Edited by Anne J. Cruz and Rosilie Hernández Gender and Song in Early Modern England Edited by Leslie C. Dunn and Katherine R. Larson The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France Women Writ, Women Writing Domna C. Stanton A Ruler’s Consort in Early Modern Germany Aemilia Juliana of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt Judith P. Aikin Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England Sarah E. Johnson Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France Edited by LEWIS C. SEIFERT Brown University, USA and REBECCA M. WILKIN Pacific Lutheran University, USA © Lewis C. Seifert, Rebecca M. Wilkin, and contributors 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street Union Road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818 Surrey, GU9 7PT USA England www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Men and women making friends in early modern France / edited by Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin. pages cm.—(Women and gender in the early modern world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-5409-6 (hardcover: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4724-5410-2 (ebook)— ISBN 978-1-4724-5411-9 (epub) 1. Friendship—France—History. 2. Interpersonal relations—France—History. 3. Man- woman relationships—France—History. I. Seifert, Lewis Carl, author, editor. II. Wilkin, Rebecca May, editor. HM1161.M46 2015 302.0944—dc23 2014045100 ISBN: 9781472454096 (hbk) ISBN: 9781472454102 (ebk – PDF) ISBN: 9781472454119 (ebk – ePUB) Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD Contents List of Figures and Table vii Contributors ix 1 Introduction: Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France 1 Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin 2 Was Montaigne a Good Friend? 31 George Hoffmann 3 The Power to Correct: Beating Men in Service Friendship 61 Michelle Miller 4 Redressing Ficino, Redeeming Desire: Symphorien Champier’s La nef des dames vertueuses 81 Todd W. Reeser 5 Translating Friendship in the Circle of Marguerite de Navarre: Plato’s Lysis and Lucian’s Toxaris 99 Marc D. Schachter 6 From Reception to Assassination: French Negotiations of “Platonic Love” 119 Katherine Crawford 7 Friends of Friends: Intellectual and Literary Sociability in the Age of Richelieu 135 Robert A. Schneider 8 Making Friends, Practicing Equality: The Correspondence of René Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia 161 Rebecca M. Wilkin 9 The Gendered Self and Friendship in Action among the Port-Royal Nuns 189 Daniella Kostroun 10 The Marquise de Sablé and Her Friends: Men and Women between the Convent and the World 219 Lewis C. Seifert vi Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France 11 From My Lips to Yours: Friendship, Confidentiality, and Gender in Early Modern France 247 Peter Shoemaker Bibliography 267 Index 293 List of Figures and Table Figures 11.1 “Sincerity.” From Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, or Moral Emblems (London, Benjamin Motte: 1709). 250 11.2 Francisco Goya (1746–1828). La confianza. Sanguine wash with red chalk on paper. Museo Nacional del Prado. 254 Table 7.1 Groups, Associations, and Academies, circa 1620–1648 139 This page has been left blank intentionally Contributors Katherine Crawford is professor of history at Vanderbilt University. She is interested in the ways that gender informs sexual practice, ideology, and identity, both in normative and non-normative formations. Her current project examines the cultural questions around gender, sexuality and embodiment raised by castrated men in early modern Europe. George Hoffmann published Montaigne’s Career in 1998. Recent work includes a forthcoming book on reformation satire, Alone unto Their Distance: French Reformers, Satire, and the Creation of Religious Foreignness, “Can There Be Conversions without Conversion Stories?” for the Early Modern Conversions Project, and “Self-Assurance and Acting in the Essais.” Daniella Kostroun is associate professor at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, specializing in the history of women and religion in early modern France. She is the author of Feminism, Absolutism, Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns (Cambridge, 2011) and co-editor of Women and Religion in the Atlantic World (1600–1800) (Toronto, 2009). Michelle Miller completed her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 2008. She has published articles on early modern French literature and culture in journals such as Seventeenth-Century French Studies, Romanic Review, and Renaissance and Reformation. Todd W. Reeser is professor of French and director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published two monographs on masculinity, and his essay in this volume is part of his next book, Setting Plato Straight: Translating Ancient Sexuality in the Renaissance. Marc D. Schachter is lecturer in French at the University of Durham. Author of Voluntary Servitude and the Erotics of Friendship: From Classical Antiquity to Early Modern France (Ashgate, 2008), he is currently working on two book projects, one addressing translation in medieval and early modern France and the other focusing on classical reception and the history of sexuality in early modern Italy and France. Robert A. Schneider is professor of history at Indiana University and, since 2005, editor of the American Historical Review. His books include Public Life in Toulouse, 1463–1798 (Cornell, 1989) and The Ceremonial City (Princeton, 1995). He is currently completing a large-scale study, “Dignified Retreat: Writers and Intellectuals in the Age of Richelieu.” x Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France Lewis C. Seifert is professor of French Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France, 1690–1715: Nostalgic Utopias (1996) and Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth- Century France (2009). His current research concerns the notion of the modern in seventeenth-century France. Peter Shoemaker is associate professor of French at The Catholic University of America and author of Powerful Connections: The Poetics of Patronage in the Age of Louis XII (University of Delaware, 2007). His research interests include literature and sociability, food studies, and topical theater in seventeenth- century France. Rebecca M. Wilkin is associate professor of French at Pacific Lutheran University and author of Women, Imagination, and the Search for Truth in Early Modern France (Ashgate, 2008). She edited Gabrielle Suchon’s work with Domna Stanton (Chicago, 2010) and is currently studying social contract theory in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French feminism. Chapter 1 Introduction: Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin Friendship appears to be enjoying a Renaissance in the twenty-first century, at least as a subject of curiosity. The virtual cultivation of relationships poses anew the age-old question: what constitutes a “friend”? Social media platforms such as Facebook seem, paradoxically, to both valorize and trivialize friendship, (re)connecting “friends” while enabling an ever expanding network of superficial contacts in which work and leisure mingle. Turbulent economic times have also put friendship in the spotlight. The Great Recession of 2008 led to talk of silver linings: were people investing more time and care in personal relations?1 Even if friends become more important when work-related stress, geographical dispersion, and divorce atomize families,2 the tasks assigned to friendship have become Herculean. Audiences are fascinated by hopeful stories of starkly unequal friends,3 as if friendship might single-handedly mitigate staggering increases in economic inequality, when the benefits of friendship as a form of social capital seem to fall disproportionately to the wealthy and the educated.4 The mainstreaming of gay and lesbian lives has both lionized friendship—friends are “families of choice”5—and 1 A comforting story, if nothing else, according to Judith Warner, “What the Great Recession Has Done to Family Life,” The New York Times Magazine, 6 August 2010. 2 Ray Pahl, On Friendship (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 5. 3 The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010) recounts the reluctant friendship between the stuttering George VI who must lead his country into war against Nazi Germany, and the failed actor, Lionel Logue, who tutors him in public speaking. The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011) develops the friendship between a white college graduate and a middle-aged black woman in the civil rights era South.