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Françoise de Graffigny, née d'Issembourg Du Buisson d'Happoncourt (11 February 1695 - 12 December 1758), was a French novelist, playwright and salon hostess. Initially famous as the author of ''Lettres d'une Péruvienne'', a novel published in 1747, she became the world's best-known living woman writer after the success of her sentimental comedy, ''Cénie'', in 1750. Her reputation as a dramatist suffered when her second play at the Comédie-Française, ''La Fille d'Aristide'', was a flop in 1758, and even her novel fell out of favor after 1830. From then until the last third of the twentieth century, she was almost forgotten, but thanks to new scholarship and the interest in women writers generated by the feminist movement, Françoise de Graffigny is now regarded as one of the major French writers of the eighteenth century. ==Early life, marriage, and widowhood in Lorraine== Françoise d’Issembourg d’Happoncourt was born in Nancy, in the duchy of Lorraine.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 1.〕 Her father, François d’Happoncourt, was a cavalry officer. Her mother, Marguerite Callot, was a great-niece of the famous Lorraine artist Jacques Callot. While she was still a girl, her family moved to Saint-Nicolas-de-Port, where her father was commander of the duke of Lorraine's horse guards.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 8-10.〕 On 19 January 1712, not yet seventeen years old, Mademoiselle d'Happoncourt was married in the church of Saint-Nicolas-de-Port to François Huguet, a young officer in the duke's service.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 11-15.〕 He was a son of the wealthy mayor of Neufchâteau, Jean Huguet. Like her father, he was an ''écuyer'' or squire, the lowest rank of nobility. In honor of the marriage, the groom received from his father the estate at Graffigny and the couple took the title "de Graffigny" as their name. On her side, the bride received a large house inherited by her mother from Jacques Callot, situated in Villers-lès-Nancy, where the couple lived for about six years.〔Jacques Choux, ''Dictionnaire des châteaux de France: Lorraine''. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1978. "Villers-lès-Nancy", p. 238.〕 François de Graffigny seemed to have a promising future, and the couple produced three children within five years: Charlotte-Antoinette (born June 1713, died December 1716); Jean-Jacques (born March 1715, lived few days) and Marie-Thérèse (born March 1716, died December 1717).〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 15-16.〕 But he was a gambler, drunk and wife-beater, who was jailed for domestic violence. In 1718, deeply in debt and already living apart, the Graffignys signed a document, which gave her authority to deal with the family's finances and required him to leave Lorraine for Paris. In 1723 she obtained a legal separation.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 16-19.〕 He died in 1725, under mysterious circumstances.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 20-21.〕 As a widow, Françoise de Graffigny was free from her brutal husband, but she never fully recovered from the financial losses or the emotional trauma of her marriage. Françoise de Graffigny's mother died in 1727, and her father remarried just months afterward, and moved to a remote town in Lorraine, where he too died in 1733, leaving his daughter free of all family obligations.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 1.〕 By that date, the court of Lorraine had moved to Lunéville, where she lived with the support of the duke's widow, the dowager duchess and regent, Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 22-24.〕 There she met a dashing cavalry officer, Léopold Desmarest, thirteen years her junior, whose father Henry Desmarest was in charge of the court's music; around 1727 he and Françoise de Graffigny began a passionate affair which lasted until 1743.〔Michel Antoine. ''Henry Desmarest (1661-1741): Biographie Critique''. Paris: Picard, 1965, pp. 167-69.〕 She also met an even younger man, François-Antoine Devaux, who had trained to become a lawyer but dreamed of being a writer; known to everyone as Panpan, he became her closest friend and confidant, and in 1733 they began a correspondence that continued until her death.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 26-29.〕 This idyllic period came to an end in 1737, when duke François-Étienne de Lorraine ceded his duchy to France to obtain French support for his marriage to Maria Theresa of Austria. Françoise de Graffigny's friends and protectors were dispersed and she herself had nowhere to go.〔Showalter, ''Françoise de Graffigny'', p. 25, 31-32.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Françoise de Graffigny」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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