LA SOLITUDE ET L’INTIME DANS LES LETTRES DE MISTRISS FANNI BUTLERD DE MADAME RICCOBONI
SOLITUDE AND PRIVACY IN LETTRES DE MISTRISS FANNI BUTLERD BY MADAME RICCOBONI

Summary/Abstract: The Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd by Madame Riccoboni is an epistolary monodic novel where only the voice of the female character, left by her lover, can be heard. A genre of the absence par excellence, the letter intended for the lover is written in the privacy of one’s study or one’s bedroom, unlike the common letters sometimes written in public, then read in front of an audience in salons. Solitude therefore is the setting for writing the love letter and for letting the feelings express themselves. But on the other hand, writing the letter in the absence of the other, and therefore in solitude, is a reason why the feeling is amplified. The very act of writing to the absent being subsumes the feelings which are crystallized by the solitude. If this epistolary novel is a denunciation of a man’s libertine behaviour, it is nonetheless an account of the female character’s inner self: anxiety, ennui, feelings of love, even sensuality are developed in this correspondence that some consider to be real. The author published this collection of letters anonymously in 1757 in the Mercure de France: did this stratagem allow her to write without censoring herself? The Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd display indeed one’s intimacy that can only be revealed because it is accomplished in solitude, without the gaze of a third party. Consequently, solitude and privacy underlie the Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd, an epistolary collection of a woman in love.

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