Also known as:
Madame de Lafayette;
French: Madame de La Fayette, Comtesse de La Fayette, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne
LA FAYETTE, MARIE-MADELEINE de. - French writer, b. in Paris in March 1634, to the Pioche de la Vergne, a family of the lesser nobility, d. there on 25 May 1693.
Through the wish of her father, a marshal and governor of Le Havre, she received an excellent education, under the guidance of Fr. Rapin and of Gilles Ménage, and soon shone in the cultivated society of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. In 1655 she married the count of La F., François Motier; through her sister-in-law (mère Angélique) she entered into relations with Henrietta of England, whose lady-in-waiting she was for a decade. Bound in tender friendship to Mme de Sévigné, she gave of her a Portrait (1659), which is the first work published by her; there followed certain love stories that are among the most profound studies of the feminine soul of seventeenth-century France: La Princesse de Montpensier (1662), Zayde (1670), La Princesse de Clèves (1678), La Comtesse de Tende (published posthumously in the Mercure de France of 1724). Deprived in 1680 of the friendship of La Rochefoucauld and in 1683 of her husband, she spent her last years in habitual company with her old teacher Ménage and the ecclesiastics Rancé and Duguet, devoting herself to memoirs on the persons and events she had come near: Histoire de Mme Henriette d'Angleterre and Mémoires de la Cour de France pour les années 1688 et 1689 (posthumous, 1720 and 1731).
Bibliography5 worksEditions: Oeuvres complètes, 3 vols., Paris 1925-30. Studies: M. Crawford, M.me de la F. and her family, New York 1908; H. Ashton, M.me de l
BIBL.: Editions: Oeuvres complètes, 3 vols., Paris 1925-30. Studies: M. Crawford, M.me de la F. and her family, New York 1908; H. Ashton, M.me de la F., Cambridge 1922; E. Magne, M.me de la F. en ménage and Le coeur et l'esprit de M.me de la F., Paris 1926-27; F. Neri, La vera La F., in Il maggio delle fate ed altri scritti di letteratura francese, Novara 1929, pp. 101-23; H. Bordeaux, En reliant la « Princesse de Clèves », in Rev. de France, 2 (1933), pp. 552-62.
Bottasso, Enzo. “La Fayette, marie-madeleine de.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VII, col. 801. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1951. https://azioneromana.com/article/la-fayette-marie-madeleine-de.
MLA
Bottasso, Enzo. “La Fayette, marie-madeleine de.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VII, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1951, col. 801. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/la-fayette-marie-madeleine-de.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec7_la_fayette_marie_madeleine_de,
author = {Bottasso, Enzo},
title = {La Fayette, marie-madeleine de},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {VII},
pages = {801},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1951},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/la-fayette-marie-madeleine-de}
}
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