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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Chicago Series
Zaide: Histoire Espagnole
Une édition critique de Zaïde, Histoire espagnole , roman de Madame de Lafayette publié en 1671.
182 pages, Unknown Binding
Published March 1, 1982
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About the author
Madame de La Fayette
235 books138 followersMarie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de la Fayette
Christened Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, she was born in Paris to a family of minor but wealthy nobility. At 16, de la Vergne became the maid of honor to Queen Anne of Austria and began also to acquire a literary education from Gilles Ménage, who gave her lessons in Italian and Latin. Ménage would lead her to join the fashionable salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry. Her father, Marc Pioche de la Vergne, had died a year before, and the same year her mother married Renaud de Sévigné, uncle of Madame de Sévigné, who would remain her lifelong intimate friend.
In 1655, de la Vergne married François Motier, comte de La Fayette, a widowed nobleman some eighteen years her senior, with whom she would have two sons. She accompanied him to country estates in Auvergne and Bourbonnais although she made frequent trips back to Paris, where she began to mix with court society and formed her own successful salon. Some of her acquaintances included Henrietta of England, future Duchess of Orleans, who asked La Fayette to write her biography; Antoine Arnauld; and the leading French writers Segrais and Huet. Earlier on, during the Fronde, La Fayette had also befriended the Cardinal de Retz.
Settling permanently in Paris in 1659, La Fayette published, anonymously, La Princesse de Montpensier in 1662. From 1665 onwards she formed a close relationship with François de La Rochefoucauld, author of Maximes, who introduced her to many literary luminaries of the time, including Racine and Boileau. 1669 saw the publication of the first volume of Zaïde, a Hispano-Moorish romance which was signed by Segrais but is almost certainly attributable to La Fayette. The second volume appeared in 1671. The title ran through reprints and translations mostly thanks to the preface Huet had offered.
Marie de LaFayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678)
La Fayette's most famous novel was La Princesse de Clèves, first published anonymously in March 1678. An immense success, the work is often taken to be the first true French novel and a prototype of the early psychological novel.
The death of La Rochefoucauld in 1680 and her husband in 1683 led La Fayette to lead a less active social life in her later years. Three works were published posthumously: La Comtesse de Tende (1718), Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre (1720), and Memoires de la Cour de France (1731).
Christened Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, she was born in Paris to a family of minor but wealthy nobility. At 16, de la Vergne became the maid of honor to Queen Anne of Austria and began also to acquire a literary education from Gilles Ménage, who gave her lessons in Italian and Latin. Ménage would lead her to join the fashionable salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry. Her father, Marc Pioche de la Vergne, had died a year before, and the same year her mother married Renaud de Sévigné, uncle of Madame de Sévigné, who would remain her lifelong intimate friend.
In 1655, de la Vergne married François Motier, comte de La Fayette, a widowed nobleman some eighteen years her senior, with whom she would have two sons. She accompanied him to country estates in Auvergne and Bourbonnais although she made frequent trips back to Paris, where she began to mix with court society and formed her own successful salon. Some of her acquaintances included Henrietta of England, future Duchess of Orleans, who asked La Fayette to write her biography; Antoine Arnauld; and the leading French writers Segrais and Huet. Earlier on, during the Fronde, La Fayette had also befriended the Cardinal de Retz.
Settling permanently in Paris in 1659, La Fayette published, anonymously, La Princesse de Montpensier in 1662. From 1665 onwards she formed a close relationship with François de La Rochefoucauld, author of Maximes, who introduced her to many literary luminaries of the time, including Racine and Boileau. 1669 saw the publication of the first volume of Zaïde, a Hispano-Moorish romance which was signed by Segrais but is almost certainly attributable to La Fayette. The second volume appeared in 1671. The title ran through reprints and translations mostly thanks to the preface Huet had offered.
Marie de LaFayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678)
La Fayette's most famous novel was La Princesse de Clèves, first published anonymously in March 1678. An immense success, the work is often taken to be the first true French novel and a prototype of the early psychological novel.
The death of La Rochefoucauld in 1680 and her husband in 1683 led La Fayette to lead a less active social life in her later years. Three works were published posthumously: La Comtesse de Tende (1718), Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre (1720), and Memoires de la Cour de France (1731).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 3, 2023
Okay so she actually went so hard
April 4, 2021
In terms of subverting masculine chivalric tropes this was good, in terms of my enjoyment of the actual content it was really boring. In light of Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire this book is much more interesting.
January 30, 2018
Une histoire d’amour longue et useless.
March 6, 2018
did not complete in the week i had to read it
December 2, 2023
C'était marrant mais quand même drôlement chiant
November 19, 2025
Les romans a tiroir ou enchassés ont mal vieilli, apres cette lecture j'ai compris pourquoi
May 7, 2023
The emotional labyrinth of the characters in Zayde overflows with an obsessive fixation on love, jealousy, and suffering – all of which are inextricably bound together in a continuous loop. Characters fall in love without genuinely knowing one another, eventually developing irrational feelings of jealousy and inexorable discontent over the lack of authentic intimacy in their amorous relations. Lafayette’s characters are tormented by the impossibility of apprehending or being apprehended by the object of their love.
Time and time again, each character’s pain in Zayde echoes the pain suffered by their double. The anguish Consalve suffers is augmented by his inability to communicate his love to Zayde, while the misery of the lonely Alphonse and Alamir is exacerbated by the recognition of their own self-destructive amorous temperaments. The alienation that afflicts Zayde intensifies as she is continuously misunderstood, silenced, and othered, while the heartbreak that tragically scourges Félime prevails as long as Alamir blindly looks past her, oblivious to her love. For a novel filled with multiple interconnected love stories, none of the characters seem actually to love each other. Alamir’s love for women like Naria and Elsibery is a fleeting feeling that fades as quickly as it is lit. Consalve’s love for Zayde, whom he barely knows, is founded upon superficiality and aestheticism, while Zayde’s love for Consalve appears just as fickle and unfounded. Lafayette unveils that Zayde loves an unfounded, fabricated portrait, a mere representation of Consalve, rather than an actual person as the plot unfolds. Zayde wishes Consalve were the idealized, illusory image she has in her mind: “J’ai souvent souhaité que vous puissiez être celui à qui vous ressemblez” (170).
The lovers in Zayde see one another through an obscured gaze, communicate through scribbled words, and claim to love one another despite barely knowing each other. Lafayette weaves together a complex narrative quilt of emotion and desire that lays bare the insufficiencies of representation and the difficulties of ever genuinely knowing and loving another human being. Love, which begins with the hope of escaping the pain of subjective isolation and being understood, ends with the lover feeling an even greater sense of isolation or succumbing to an idealized illusion of love. Erotic love, which repeatedly seeks to transcend separation by bridging the emotional divide between discontinuous beings, is conditioned upon the lover’s ability to grasp one another – not just in the body but in the soul. However, this vision of love is never captured in Zayde, a fictional realm filled with impenetrable beings.
The insuperable conflict that permeates Zayde is the inability of humankind to comprehend one another, a clash between desire and capability that portrays each character, in some shape or form, l’autre inconnu – the unknown other for whom love is but a mere illusion.
Time and time again, each character’s pain in Zayde echoes the pain suffered by their double. The anguish Consalve suffers is augmented by his inability to communicate his love to Zayde, while the misery of the lonely Alphonse and Alamir is exacerbated by the recognition of their own self-destructive amorous temperaments. The alienation that afflicts Zayde intensifies as she is continuously misunderstood, silenced, and othered, while the heartbreak that tragically scourges Félime prevails as long as Alamir blindly looks past her, oblivious to her love. For a novel filled with multiple interconnected love stories, none of the characters seem actually to love each other. Alamir’s love for women like Naria and Elsibery is a fleeting feeling that fades as quickly as it is lit. Consalve’s love for Zayde, whom he barely knows, is founded upon superficiality and aestheticism, while Zayde’s love for Consalve appears just as fickle and unfounded. Lafayette unveils that Zayde loves an unfounded, fabricated portrait, a mere representation of Consalve, rather than an actual person as the plot unfolds. Zayde wishes Consalve were the idealized, illusory image she has in her mind: “J’ai souvent souhaité que vous puissiez être celui à qui vous ressemblez” (170).
The lovers in Zayde see one another through an obscured gaze, communicate through scribbled words, and claim to love one another despite barely knowing each other. Lafayette weaves together a complex narrative quilt of emotion and desire that lays bare the insufficiencies of representation and the difficulties of ever genuinely knowing and loving another human being. Love, which begins with the hope of escaping the pain of subjective isolation and being understood, ends with the lover feeling an even greater sense of isolation or succumbing to an idealized illusion of love. Erotic love, which repeatedly seeks to transcend separation by bridging the emotional divide between discontinuous beings, is conditioned upon the lover’s ability to grasp one another – not just in the body but in the soul. However, this vision of love is never captured in Zayde, a fictional realm filled with impenetrable beings.
The insuperable conflict that permeates Zayde is the inability of humankind to comprehend one another, a clash between desire and capability that portrays each character, in some shape or form, l’autre inconnu – the unknown other for whom love is but a mere illusion.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews