The Perraults and Versailles

Charles’s position in Colbert’s orbit offered the family new ways to act in the social world. This chapter concentrates on the ways the Perraults drew upon their access to Versailles in a variety of contexts, from the dissections of exotic animals in the Academy of Sciences to their literary sociability, as it served as a library of sorts. By tracing how Versailles became an object in the Perraults’ extended network, this chapter suggests a new model for understanding cultural patronage and Versailles’ role in the cultural politics of Louis XIV’s France. Not simply a radiant palace that stunned visitors by its splendor, the court’s reputation grew through appropriations by men of letters, which benefited the Perraults in their Parisian endeavors while they promoted the king’s glory.

The Perraults in the Countryside

Always in need of credit, financiers had to project an image of wealth, and literature became a means for supporting this avenue of mobility. The Perraults entertained other notables and men of letters in their country house at Viry, and spread their reputation through poems that described the sumptuous dinners held there. This chapter argues that Charles’s entry to the world of letters was motivated by the need to augment the reputation of Pierre, whose career in finance peaked in those years. This analysis, coupled with a study of later representations of the Perraults’ social and literary life in this period, serves to present a nuanced view of the hotly-debated concept of the “salon” as applicable to seventeenth-century literary life.

Introduction

The introduction sets the story of the Perraults against the backdrop of early modern France. It covers the transformation of French culture in the seventeenth century (in its different dimenstion: geographical, social, and institutional, including the rise of academies and salons, the court at Versailles), the history of intellectual families, notions of family strategy, and the use of networks in historical analysis. It also includes an outline of the chapters.