Préciosité

The French literary style called préciosité (French pronunciation: ​[pʁesjɔzite], preciousness) arose in the 17th century from the lively conversations and playful word games of les précieuses (French pronunciation: ​[le pʁesjøz]), the witty and educated intellectual ladies who frequented the salon of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet; her Chambre bleue (the "blue room" of her hôtel particulier) offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionalism and coarse manners of the royal court during the minority of Louis XIV.

One of the central figures of the salon that gathered at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, Madeleine de Scudéry, wrote voluminous romance novels that embodied the refinements of preciosité; they were suffused with feminine elegance, exquisitely correct scruples of behavior, and courtly Platonic love that were hugely popular with female audiences, but scorned by most men. The "questions of love" that were debated in the précieuses' salons reflected the "courts of love" (fictional courts which judged lovers' behavior) that were a feature of medieval courtly love. Molière satirized the Précieuses in his comedy Les Précieuses ridicules (1659).

None of the ladies ever applied the term précieuse to herself or defined it. Myriam Maître has found in préciosité not so much a listable series of characteristics "as an interplay of forces, a place of encounter and mutual ordering of certain of the tensions that extend through the century, the court and the field of literature". In assessing the career of Philippe Quinault, which began at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, 1653, Patricia Howard noted, "For if in French theatre in the second half of the century, women's roles are preeminent, it was the précieux movement which made them so."

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