Portraits in Mademoiselle de Montpensier's Memoirs

The article considers portraits in Mlle de Montpensier's Memoirs (published in 1717) and identifies their role in actualizing the author's intentions. The author of the article compares it with the genre of a salon portrait. The founder of this genre was a female memoir writer whose works were published in the collection Different Portraits (1659). By the time it emerged, the portrait as an element of novel narration had already evoked significant public interest due to the novels of Madeleine de Scudery; however, the fad for creating portraits began to spread among the nobility by the initiative of Mlle de Montpensier. She revealed an outstanding talent in making portraits, and her brave experiments facilitated the genre solidification. Mlle de Montpensier's mastery became the foundation for the analysis of the portrait technique in the memoirs. The analysis undertaken in the research shows that in the memoir genre the influence of the experience of the salon portrait description is revealed in using fixed rhetoric verbal formulas, as well as the techniques and principles tested in the collection. Mlle de Montpensier does not strive to airbrush the descriptions, she elicits the duality of human nature. However, in general the research confirms the statement of the French literary critics who claim that in the memoirs the portrait genre is transformed and performs a different function. Portraits being integrated into the memoir narration lead to a noticeable genre curtailment. It is revealed in the significant reduction of the text volume, in the abandonment of a full-featured characterization of a person, and in the genre-specific pattern of creating a portrait, as well as narrative elements with commentaries and evaluative judgments of the female memoir writer. Mlle de Montpensier frequently describes the courtiers' attire since her clothes are an important feature of the social status. But the inner qualities of the person are more important for the author than the appearance. Mlle de Montpensier outlines the characteristic feature of the person whose portrait she is painting with one or two strokes, this feature making the image memorable. Mlle de Montpensier does not set the aim of creating a full-featured understanding of a person, but she uses portraiture as a technique that allows to reveal her own 'Self more prominently. The descriptive part of 'integrated portraits' is created with the help of fixed rhetoric phrases and is related to the culture of the 'ready-made word'. However, their choice shows the system of moral and ethical values of Mademoiselle herself. Narrative and reflexive elements emphasize the subjective nature of the descriptions. This subjectivity arises not from the political views, as with other memoir writers, but is predetermined by the aristocratic ethics. Thus, the portraits clearly reveal the autobiographical intention of Mlle de Montpensier's Memoirs, they not only create the image of 'another', but also serve as a means of continuous self-description.

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