6 - Madame de Lafayette and La Princesse de Clèves as Landmark

Summary

A landmark orients, signals a turning point, indicates a boundary. Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678) was immediately recognized, both by those who disliked it and those who appreciated it, as announcing a new approach to plot structure, representation of society, plausibility (or its lack), and character development. Later the terms ‘psychology’ and ‘analysis’ were used to point to the narrative’s approach to portraying the feelings and thoughts of the protagonist. One of the most obvious ways in which the text distinguishes itself from other novels of its period is its brevity. This quality gives it particular staying-power as a landmark, making it useful in school curricula as an example of the literature of its period—though this use risks skewing the view of seventeenth-century novels by presenting a striking, innovative exception, as the norm. Because landmarks indicate boundaries, they can serve as symbols of the territories they define. La Princesse de Clèves serves today as a marker of the cultural tradition of France itself. It is thus at the centre of debates about the literary canon and of national identity. For both the seventeenth century and for the twenty-first, Lafayette’s work fuels debate.