Henriette-Julie de Murat
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Henriette-Julie de Murat (1668 in Paris – 9 September 1716 in Château de la Buzardière) was an aristocratic French writer of the late 17th century, associated with the Baroque Précieuses movement, and one of the leading members of the French Salons who created the fairy tale genre.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
Life
[edit]She most likely spent most of her childhood in Paris after having been born there on 14 October 1668 to Louise-Marie Foccault de Daugnon from Limousin, daughter of Louis Foucault, Count de Daugnon, and Michel de Castelnau from Bigorre, colonel and governor of Brest, and son of Jacques de Mauvissiere, Marquis de Castelnau.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
As the daughter of a marquis, she was officially presented at the court of Versailles in 1686.[4][5][6] In 1691 she married Nicholas de Murat, Count de Gilbertez, colonel of an infantry regiment.[3][4][5] He had previously been married to her cousin, Marie de la Tour, who had died 1688.[4]
From 1692 she frequently attended the salon of Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles, the Marquise de Lambert at the Rue de Richelieu in the heart of Paris.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
In 1697 she published Memoirs of the Countess of M***, a two-volume collection of false "memoirs" which was meant as a response to Charles de Saint-Évremond's 1696 book Memoirs of the Life of Count D*** before his Retirement, which had portrayed women as incapable of virtue and fickle.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
She was one of the leaders of the fairy tale vogue, along with Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont La Force, Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier, and Charles Perrault. At Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier's insistence, she published three volumes of fairy tales between 1698 and 1699 - Fairy Tales (1698), New Fairy Tales (1698), and Sublime and Allegorical Stories (1699).[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
In 1699 she also published A Trip to the Country, which was particularly popular, going through multiple editions right up to the 1789 Revolution and extending the fairy tale genre into a contemporary setting with a cross over to the ghost story genre.[10][11]
That same year Murat was elected to the Accademia degli Ricovrati (Academy of the Sheltered) of Padua, along with de La Force and Bernard, joining the salon hostesses d’Aulnoy, L’Heritier, Scudery and Antoinette Deshoulieres. Another recognition she received was one of the Academy of Toulouse's Floral Games prizes for excerpts from a volume of her poetry, which is now lost.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
In December 1699 she was involved in a scandal when a report was circulated accusing her of "shocking practices and beliefs" including lesbianism.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
‘The crimes that are attributed to Madame de Murat are not of a kind to be easily proven by way of information, because they deal with domestic impiety and a monstrous attachment to people of her own sex. However, I would very much like to know what she would say to the following facts; a portrait pierced several times with a knife, an act caused by her own jealousy towards a woman she loved and then left a few months ago only to become attached to Madame de Nantiat, another woman of the greatest dissoluteness, known less for the fines she incurred for her gambling than for her moral disorder. That woman, who is housed by [Murat] is the object of her perpetual adorations even in the presence of some valets and pawnbrokers.’[13][14]
She was estranged from her husband and disinherited by her mother, which forced her to stop publishing. It appears she spent the next year in the Limousin region staying with Diane-Marie de Pontcharraud, who was a year or two older than Murat, and who had married the Baron de Nantiat when she was just fourteen.[12][15]
She was exiled to the Château de Loches in 1702; in 1701 her debauchery was considered confirmed by the fact that she was pregnant.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
She was then transferred to the chateau prisons of Saumur, then Angers, then back to Loches, living as a peripheral member of provincial society, and labouring under diminishing health, before being brought back to the Château de Loches in 1707.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
She wrote a 607-page journal, framed by a letter to her cousin Mademoiselle de Menou.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
She was not allowed to return to Paris until the death of Louis XIV in 1715 but by that time she was so sick with arthritis and dropsy that she retired to her grandmother’s castle in Maine.[5][12] She died in the family’s Chateau de Buzardiere on 26 September 1716 aged 46 or 48.[17][10]
Works
[edit]Fairy tales
[edit]- Fairy Tales (1697)
- Le Parfait Amour (Perfect Love)
- Anguillette
- Jeune et Belle (Young and Handsome)
- New Fairy Tales (1698)
- Le Palais de la vengeance (The Palace of Revenge)
- Le Prince des feuilles (The Prince of Leaves)
- Le Bonheur des moineaux (The Happiness of Sparrows), a verse tale
- L'Heureuse Peine (The Fortunate Punishment)
- Le Voyage de campagne (1699)
- Le Père et ses quatre fils (The Father and His Four Sons)
- Sublime and Allegorical Stories (1699)
- Le Roi Porc (The Pig King)
- L'Île de la magnificence (The Island of Magnificence)
- Le Sauvage (The Savage)
- Le Turbot (The Turbot)
- Journal pour Mademoiselle de Menou (1708)
- L'Aigle au beau bec (The Eagle with the Handsome Beak)
- La Fée princesse (The Princess Fairy)
- Peine perdue
- L'Origine du hérisson (The Origin of the Hedgehog)
- An untitled unfinished tale[18]
References
[edit]- ^ [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|
page needed ]]]_1-0">a [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-1">b [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-2">c [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-3">d [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-4">e [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-5">f [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-6">g [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-7">h [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-8">i [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-9">j [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-10">k [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-11">l [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-12">m [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-13">n [[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]] ]_1-14">o Gethner 2011, p. [page needed]. - ^ Stedman 2011, p. 1.
- ^ a b Patard 2012, p. 81.
- ^ a b c d e Stedman 2011, p. 2.
- ^ a b c d e f Ness, Mari (15 February 2018). "Imprisonment and the Fairy Tales of Henriette Julie de Murat". www.tor.com.[unreliable source?]
- ^ Patard 2012, pp. 81–82.
- ^ Patard 2012, p. 82.
- ^ Stedman 2011, pp. 2–3.
- ^ Willden, Jared (2016). "The Scandal of Sources of Henriette-Julie de Murat's Histoires sublimes et allegoriques". Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism. 9 (2).
- ^ a b Stedman 2011, p. 9.
- ^ Stedman 2011, p. 4.
- ^ a b c d e "Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 195 – Madame de Murat: Author of Fairy Tales, Lover of Women | Alpennia". alpennia.com. Retrieved 2023-12-25.
- ^ Patard 2012, pp. 84–85.
- ^ Stedman 2011, p. 7.
- ^ a b c d Patard 2012, p. 83.
- ^ a b c d Stedman 2011, p. 8.
- ^ Patard 2012, p. 84.
- ^ Although a 1753 edition of Murat's last novel, Les Lutins du Château de Kernosy (1710), includes two fairy tales, Peau d'Ours (Bearskin) and Etoilette (Starlight), these were written by Marguerite de Lubert.
Sources
[edit]- Stedman, Allison (2011). "Introduction". In Gethner, Perry (ed.). A Trip to the Country: by Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, Comtesse de Murat. Wayne State University Press. pp. 1–17. ISBN 978-0-8143-3681-6. Project MUSE chapter 368859.
- Gethner, Perry (2011). A Trip to the Country: by Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, Comtesse de Murat. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-3681-6.
- Patard, Geneviève (2012). "Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, Countess de Murat: 1668?–1716". In Raynard, Sophie (ed.). The Teller's Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers. SUNY Press. pp. 81–87. ISBN 978-1-4384-4355-3. Project MUSE chapter 662497.
Further reading
[edit]- Alpennia Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 195 – Madame de Murat: Author of Fairy Tales, Lover of Women https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-195-madame-de-murat-author-fairy-tales-lover-women
- Heidmann, Ute (2007). "Review of Madame de Murat: Contes. Bibliothèque des génies et des fées 3, Geneviève Patard". Marvels & Tales. 21 (2): 280–283. JSTOR 41388841. Gale A178793896 Project MUSE 241692 ProQuest 230765653.
- Hofmann, Melissa A. (2014). "The Fairy as Hero(ine) and Author: Representations of Female Power in Murat's "Le Turbot"". Marvels & Tales. 28 (2): 252–277. doi:10.17613/xa5j-t673. JSTOR 10.13110/marvelstales.28.2.0252. Project MUSE 555483 ProQuest 1586083800.
- Willden, Jared (2016). The Scandal of Sources of Henriette-Julie de Murat's Histoires sublimes et allégoriques (Report).
- Windling, Terri ‘Les Contes des Fées: The Literary Fairy Tales of France’ /Once upon a time in Paris... https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2020/03/once-upon-a-time.html
External links
[edit]- 1668 births
- 1716 deaths
- Collectors of fairy tales
- 17th-century French women writers
- 17th-century French writers
- 18th-century French women writers
- 18th-century French writers
- French salon-holders
- French women short story writers
- French short story writers
- Women science fiction and fantasy writers
- French women folklorists