6 - L’Histoire de La Chiaramonte: A Divertissement for the Circle of Marguerite de Valois

Summary

Abstract: Marie de Beaulieu's L’Histoire de La Chiaramonte is a repository of entertainments, subjects, and literary genres embraced by Marguerite de Valois and her circle. A detailed synopsis of L’Histoire de La Chiaramonte, which has not yet been translated or edited in a modern edition, is provided. Beaulieu's characters that represent members of Marguerite de Valois’s milieu are further considered, as are the prefatory material and poetry of compliment that accompany the main text. An examination of the games, conversations, and actions of the characters, as well as Beaulieu's literary references, shows that they illustrate the myriad ways the work is meant to please the influential proto-salonniéres of the sixteenth century and foreshadow such taste in the later seventeenth century.

Keywords: L’Histoire de la Chiaramonte; Marguerite de Valois; Louise Marguerite de Lorraine, Mademoiselle de Guise, princesse de Conti; Henriette de Clèves, duchesse de Nevers; Anne d’Este, duchesse de Nemours; Claud-Catherine de Clermont, duchesse de Retz

Speaking after the kindnesses and graces of the Court, [the gentleman] did not forget to say how Mademoiselle de Guise shines there as much in wit as in virtues.

— Marie de Beaulieu, L’Histoire de La Chiaramonte

Your CHIARAMONTE, that for you shines much more brightly than the Sun.

— Isabella Andreini to Marie de Beaulieu

In the Introduction to this book, I drew attention to a poem composed from lines by Petrarch in Marie de Beaulieu's L’Histoire de La Chiaramonte, which illustrates the way that Beaulieu was participating in a popular literary game with deep roots in Italian literary culture. This particular divertissement is just a small clue to the fact that this entire volume is full of illustrations of and references to the elements of entertainment in the circle of Marguerite de Valois—those artifacts that reflect the “virtues or eccentricities” of the women who are close to her and make up the “players,” so to speak, in her world. This work as a whole is meant to be both a divertissement itself and a tribute to the tastes of such women.