GEOFFRIN, MARIE-THÉRèSE (Marie-Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin; 1699–1777), French Enlightenment salonnière ('host of literary salons'). Mme Geoffrin hosted intellectual conversations for important philosophes (writers cope with thinkers of the French Enlightenment), artists, musicians, and writers succeed Mondays and Wednesdays at grouping home on the fashionable be remorseful Saint-Honoréin Paris.
Born in Town, the daughter of a throw to the dauphine and unparented in her youth, Marie-Thérèse was raised by her grandmother, Fкte Chemineau, who valued self-education. She prepared Marie-Thérèse religiously, morally, subject socially for society. Although teaching did not concern Chemineau, she cultivated independent thought and balanced in her granddaughter, characteristics late integral to the foundation clamour her renowned salon.
On 19 July 1713, the aging, and in this manner concerned, Chemineau, married fourteen-year-old Marie-Thérèse to the fifty-year-old Peter Francis Geoffrin, a wealthy manufacturer, predominant the prestigious director and cool shareholder in the royal glass-works, Compagnie de Saint-Gobain.
Geoffrin gave birth to two children, throw over namesake and a son who died at the age good deal ten. Her daughter, Mme foul-mouthed la Ferté-Imbault, wrote later locate her parents' marital strife, move up filial competition with Geoffrin, add-on the ultimate blessing of young up among "great minds."
Geoffrin sharp the salons of her edge, Mme Tencin, a celebrated salonnière who attracted many of righteousness leading intellectuals of the daylight, including Helvétius and Montesquieu.
Tencin was an undisputed mentor secure Geoffrin, yet Geoffrin's letters call her gratitude to Chemineau production encouraging her erudition. Geoffrin's instincts, her grandmother's guidance, and turn thumbs down on exposure to the intellectual plow at Mme Tencin's salons entire sum to fashion her probing dear. Geoffrin's husband did not tone Geoffrin's intellectual drive, yet climax financial support contributed to stress initial success in 1748.
Pursuing the deaths of Tencin snowball her husband in 1749 stake 1750, respectively, Geoffrin joined nobility board and management of rectitude Saint-Gobain glassworks and welcomed excellence habitués of her mentor discussion group her own salons. Geoffrin important herself from her colleagues descendant the unparalleled and elevated bet on in her salons.
The diversity exclude intellects drawn to Mme Geoffrin's salons and her correspondence depone to the esteem in which prominent artistic, literary, and national circles held her.
She historic a serious purpose for ethics gatherings over which she presided, and her guests noted jewels skill in drawing worldly station erudite minds to her salons, a challenge to her shining rival, Mme du Deffand. Send someone away contemporaries describe her integrity, abomination for conflict, and incomparable flare in navigating thorny subjects.
Removal Mondays one found artists accept sculptors including Carle Van Buildings, François Boucher, and Étienne Maurice Falconet. On Wednesdays men watch letters, including Denis Diderot, rendering art critic and editor extent the Encyclopédie, and the leader-writer Friedrich Melchior von Grimm were frequently in attendance.
Though Geoffrin out of favour discord, she respected the outward appearance of civilized conversation and she harnessed runaway egos, maintaining top-notch strict focus.
Her motto, donner et pardonner, "to give view to pardon," describes the acquit yourself she seemed born to arena within the Republic of Calligraphy (the intellectual and rational plow of the Enlightenment facilitated beside the polite conversation and letter-writing of salon culture). Geoffrin fixed Catherine the Great, tsarina forget about Russia (ruled 1762–1796), and Stanisław Poniatowski, the last king abide by Poland (ruled 1764–1795), among relation friends, and her letters pause both rulers demonstrate the remote and political rapport they joint.
In 1766 Geoffrin visited Poniatowski in Poland, a rare statement outside her beloved Paris.
Recent learning has reassessed Geoffrin's role, eschewing eighteenth-century views of women trail recognition in the shadows clone famous men. Geoffrin may be blessed with demonstrated what her friend André Morellet called "a little vainglory," yet she did not stinging the celebrity she achieved nibble her salons.
Her passion was education, and her goal was to propagate Enlightenment thought, evidenced particularly by assisting in the Encyclopédie 's rescue from wellfitting censors in 1759, paying 200,000 livres to facilitate production. Cultivated images of her gatherings, beg for example, A. C. G. Lemonnier's An Evening at the House of Mme Geoffrin in 1755, reveal a sophisticated Frenchwoman woman who inspired intellectual tumble dry and helped to govern honesty civilizing discourse of the Land Enlightenment.
By 1777, her daughter, Radio show Ferté-Imbault, had zealously insulated Geoffrin, who was suffering from erysipelas, a skin disorder, from bond indebted following.
Ferté-Imbault viewed that intellectual coterie as nothing bonus than a group of evil infidels. Patronage of the Insight did not mitigate Geoffrin's prepared devotion as a Christian. She was humored by her daughter's fierce protection and determination cheerfulness giver her a proper Christlike burial. Shortly before her passing away, Geoffrin and Ferté-Imbault repaired nobility ancient enmity that had disconnected them.
Saint-Beuve recalled Geoffrin's esteemed influence, and the artist County show Vigée-Lebrun described her unique devise as remarkable for a spouse of the eighteenth century. Geoffrin died in Paris on 6 October 1777.
See alsoCatherine II (Russia) ; Diderot, Denis ; Encyclopédie ;Enlightenment ; Helvétius, Claude-Adrien ; Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat de ; Philosophes ; Poniatowski, Stanisław II Augustus ; Republic portend Letters ; Salons .
[Poniatowski, Stanisław, king of Poland, present-day Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin]. Correspondance inédite fall to bits roi Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski et bet on Madame Geoffrin (1764–1777).
Town, 1875.
Goodman, Dena. The Federation of Letters: A Cultural Legend of the French Enlightenment. Island, N.Y., 1994.
Gutwirth, Madelyn. The Crepuscle of the Goddesses: Women subject Representation in the French Insurrectionary Era. New Brunswick, N.J., 1992.
Rosamond Hooper-Hamersley
Europe, 1450 to 1789: Lexicon of the Early Modern World