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AbstractThe 18th century witnessed a progressive strengthening of the relationship between authors and their work along with a corresponding accusation of the infamous signs of plagiarism. This was far, however, from the prickly sensitivity to borrowings that characterizes our era. From writing and working practices to the relationship of authority, the study of the Mémoires d'Ancien Régime makes it possible to name and correlate a certain number of factors that occasionally complicate the work of the scholar, sometimes to the point of rendering it impossible to identify one single author—the reversibility of the document and the monument, which made the Mémoires, even the most complete, sources for other works; the anonymity of the writing, its delegation to secretaries, its collegiality in the particular case of religious communities; and the subsequent fabrication of the work from miscellaneous texts by booksellers or heirs. These are not facts, but rather problems that must be identified or otherwise resolved concerning the cultural spaces to be defined or described.
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87.More information
The engraver Sébastien Leclerc is very representative of the long reign of Louis xiv, with whom he is an almost exact contemporary. Admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1672, he was also closely allied with the Royal Academy of Science (founded 1666) of which he was one of the preferred engravers. His entire life is divided between the sciences and arts, and he was not only a fine mathematician and physicist, but also collected instruments and experimental models. The print entitled The Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts, dedicated to the king in 1698, appears to be Leclerc's graphic testament. In it he exposes not only his faith in scientific progress as opposed to the quackish barbarism personified by the chiromancer of the first plane, and his admiration for the reign of the prince who authorized scientific renewal, but he also shows with a discreet pride – in scattering throughout his plate very clear and specific allusions for connoisseurs of his own past or present works issuing from royal commissions or else arising from his own initiatives – that he is not the last person to have participated in this noble enterprise. While knowing that Death, hidden in an anamorphosis, awaits him, he hopes that his genius will survive and that he will have earned the right to the eternal gratitude of the scholarly community. Thus, by this meticulous and subtle work, an artist whose recognized first qualities are exactitude and positive realism is inscribed in the ‘metaphysical' tradition usually associated with the painters of Vanities.
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88.More information
This article examines the letters written by Françoise de Motteville, Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans and Catherine d'Aspremont in spring 1660. The writers attended the marriage of Louis XIV and addressed several letters to a network of correspondents eager for the latest news of the court. The study of this correspondence sheds light on a network of aristocratic women, its publishing practices and the actions undertaken by its members via letters. The present article also discusses the correspondence between two memorialists, Françoise de Motteville and Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, who employed high society's codes of creative writing. We analyze the relationships they maintain between epistolary writing and memorialist writing, with letters commented or reprised in the memoirs. Our study thus reports on the exchange, circulation, conservation and reuse of letters by women authors in the seventeenth century. A collegial practice, a writing of immediacy, letters ultimately participate in the construction of a personal narrative, with epistolary writing eventually becoming the memoir.