Madame de Lafayette

When, in 2007, the French President scorned the idea that budding public servants should be required to read La Princesse de Clèves, the ensuing protests, whatever their purely political dimension, were a reminder of this work's iconic status. Naturally enough, perhaps, this spotlight left in the shade the other works attributed to Mme de Lafayette. There was also scant reference to the messy question of attribution. With no manuscript in existence the present attribution of La Princesse de Clèves was made 'definitively' only a century after its publication in 1678: for example, the 1764 reprint of the 1704 Paris edition cites La Rochefoucauld, Mme de Lafayette, and Segrais as co-authors. Does this matter? True, we would still watch Hamlet if it were performed by the Royal Bacon Company. However, in the case of Mme de Lafayette, biographical details are still often used to shore up critical hypotheses. At the outset, therefore, one issue deserves attention: what does 'Mme de Lafayette' now imply?

The question was revived by Geneviève Mouligneau in works that challenged Mme de Lafayette's authorship, not just of La Princesse de Clèves, but of La Princesse de Montpensier, Zaïde, La Comtesse de Tende, Henriette d'Angleterre, and the Mémoires de la cour de France pour les années 1688 et 1689.¹ Given the various degrees of uncertainty supporting the attribution of these works (for example, the evidence has included a letter, probably forged two centuries after, in which Mme de Lafayette supposedly admits authorship of La Princesse de Clèves), Mouligneau's case deserved a reasoned response.² Not all responses have been of that kind. One considered rejoinder was that of Roger Duchêne, who reviewed the evidence for each of the works traditionally attributed to Mme de Lafayette. Even here, despite his forensic skill, persuasion can take a strange turn:

Si l'on ôte La Princesse de Clèves à Mme de La Fayette, on a d'un côté un livre sans auteur et, de l'autre, un auteur quasi sans livres. Il y a heureusement La Princesse de Montpensier. Il est certain qu'elle l'a écrite. Elle a donc écrit aussi l'autre Princesse.³

This case would be stronger had Duchêne not admitted earlier, of La Princesse de Montpensier, that one may only suspect Mme de Lafayette to be its author, but not be certain.⁴ In addition, while accepting that Zaïde is a collective work, he confidently gives Mme de Lafayette a strange role, that of a coordinator not responsible for the coordination: she becomes 'l'incontestable auteur d'un roman largement gâché par tant d'interventions étrangères'.⁵ He attributes La Comtesse de Tende to Mme de Lafayette on purely internal evidence, but (without referring to Mouligneau's work) casts doubt on the authorship of Henriette d'Angleterre, and admits that the attribution of the Mémoires de la cour de France was made 'sans grande raison'.⁶ These conclusions will not entirely reassure those who see Mme de Lafayette as the author, or sole author, of these works, or who lean on biographical material to support critical hypotheses. This lingering uncertainty explains why some critics refer to a common endeavour, as, for example, Giorgetto Giorgi: 'Mme de Lafayette (ou, si l'on préfère, "l'atelier de création litte ´raire" qu'elle a dirigé et qui comprenait Segrais, Huet et La Rochefoucauld)'.⁷ The time has perhaps come for a patient researcher to reassess all the available evidence, in the knowledge that the truth is frustratingly elusive and that the very concept of 'author' has changed.⁸

That caveat entered, 'Mme de Lafayette' still remains an indispensable bibliographical tool. This is a reminder that no critical bibliography has appeared since that of J. W. Scott, based on material published before 1972.⁹ Since works exist that provide reasonable information on pre-1995 material relating to La Princesse de Clèves, the focus of this état present for this novel will be placed on the period following.¹⁰ The usual constraints mean that it is here that...