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TOMAS MONTERREY
Universidad de La Laguna
jmonterr@ull.edu.es
<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7741-4741>
THE TRANSNATIONAL FORMATION
OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL: THE CASE OF MADAME
DE VILLEDIEU’S THE ANNALS OF LOVE (1672)
LA FORMACIÓN TRANSNACIONAL DE LA NOVELA
INGLESA: EL CASO DE THE ANNALS OF LOVE
(1672), DE MADAME DE VILLEDIEU
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202510935
Abstract
In the late 1660s and 1670s, Madame de Villedieu (née Desjardins) made a
substantial contribution to the evolution of prose fiction, moving the genre
from the heroic romance to the nouvelle in France, and thus in England. Her
Annales Galantes (1670), translated as The Annals of Love (1672), is a landmark
work within the development of the genre. The twenty-one “amorous
adventures” that make up this collection contain an impressive array of characters
and psychological portraits of individuals enmeshed in a multiplicity of romantic
relationships and situations. Drawing from chronicles and historical records and
set in Europe and Asia in periods ranging from the early Middle Ages to the
modern era, the author presents these stories as factual accounts through her use
of sources and reinforces her narrative authority with calculated digressions and
metanarrative commentary. This article examines Villedieu’s innovative
experiment in history and narrative technique in the literary context of the
transition to the nouvelle (and the novel) in England. It studies the ways in which
narration in The Annals abandons the unreliable voices and human-like points of
view that characterised the English heroic romances, making use of authorial
privilege, literary techniques and discourses associated with truth-telling, such
as omniscience, biography and history, while constantly reminding readers of
her imaginative reconstruction of the stories.
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Keywords: Restoration fiction, Desjardins/Villedieu, nouvelle galante, history,
omniscience, literary metanarration.
Resumen
Madame de Villedieu (nacida Desjardins) contribuyó sustancialmente al género de
ficción en su evolución desde el romance heroico a la nouvelle en Francia —y por
ende en Inglaterra— a finales de los 1660s y principios de los 1670s. Su Annales
Galantes (1670), traducido como The Annals of Love (1672), marcó ese proceso.
Comprende veintiuna “aventuras amorosas” que despliegan una impresionante
galería de personajes y retratos psicológicos, envueltos en todo tipo de relaciones y
situaciones amorosas basadas en crónicas y registros históricos, tanto en Europa
como en el ámbito Oriental, del siglo X a la Edad Moderna. Villedieu intentó
infundir veracidad en sus relatos incluyendo una lista de fuentes históricas, y
reforzó su autoridad narrativa con digresiones calculadas y comentarios
metanarrativos. Este artículo estudia el innovador experimento de Villedieu con la
historia y la técnica narrativa en el contexto literario de la transición del romance
heroico a la nouvelle (y la novela) en Inglaterra. Se analiza cómo la narración de The
Annals abandona voces no-fidedignas y focalizadores humanos propios de los
romances heroicos ingleses, y utiliza técnicas y discursos autoriales asociados con
la verdad, tales como la omnisciencia, la biografía y la historia, al tiempo que no
deja de recordar al lector la esencia imaginaria de sus reconstrucciones.
Palabras clave: Ficción del período de la Restauración, Desjardins/Villedieu,
nouvelle galante, historia, omnisciencia, metanarración literaria.
1. Introduction
Throughout the 1660s and 1670s, English fiction underwent a transformation
that has yet to be fully apprehended, especially its transnational dimension.
During this time, a variety of new forms and subgenres were imported from the
Continent, largely from or via France, which markedly influenced production in
the vernacular language.1 In the early 1660s, British writers such as George
Mackenzie, John Dauncey, Percy Herbert and Samuel Pordage endeavoured to
naturalise French heroic romances by incorporating domestic politics and using
the English literary heritage. However, the genre had become outdated by the
end of the decade and was superseded by the short nouvelle, introduced in France
in the late 1650s by writers as different as Paul Scarron (translated in 1665) and
Madame de La Fayette, whose The Princess of Monpensier was published
anonymously in 1662 and translated in 1666.
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The achievements of Marie-Catherine-Hortense de Villedieu, née Desjardins
(1640?-1683) have been overshadowed by the prominence given to La Fayette,
another eminent salonnière. Until 1668, Villedieu authored her books under the
nom de plume Mademoiselle Desjardins; but, according to DeJean, “When a
young man of a superior rank who had promised to marry her (once again secretly)
refused to do so, she simply took his name: in the late 1660s she began to be
known as ‘Madame de Villedieu’” (1991: 130), though many of her works were
published anonymously in both periods. She began her career around 1659
publishing poetry, prose and drama, and was a leading figure in the transition
from the heroic romance to the nouvelle. She is attributed the creation of the
pseudo-memoirs genre in The Memoires of the Life and Rare Adventures of
Henrietta Silvia Moliere (1672) and, in the words of Ros Ballaster, is “best known
for instituting the nouvelle galante, short sequences of stories concerned with
amorous adventures” (2017: 392). She embraced the nouvelle galante in 1667
when, in the preface to Anaxandre, she announced that the adventures of the
novel “are more gallant than heroic” (Desjardins 1667: n.p., my translation).2
Cléonice, subtitled Le roman galant (1669), marks a transition towards the
nouvelle (Sale 2006: 35). As Giorgio Sale has argued, the piece ushered in a
period of Villedieu’s literary experimentation with genres, forms and styles that
she would carry over from work to work (2006: 43).
The scope and subject matter of Annales Galantes (1670), translated into English
as The Annals of Love (1672), are consistently —and explicitly— reflective of the
nouvelle galante. It is thus an excellent text to investigate the impact of the new
genre in England and explore the transition from the heroic romance to the nouvelle
(and the novel) or, to use McKeon’s terminology, the move from writing
verisimilitude (vraisemblance) to true-to-fact accounts — or claim to historicity
(1988: 54; see also McKeon 1985: 165). Villedieu produced a mature, highly
entertaining work in which she describes the features of the nouvelle galante as she
blends history and imagination, and in which she avoids the overwrought style of
the heroic romance and its use of unreliable storytellers. Instead, she reinforces her
narrator’s skills or “competence” (Lanser 1981: 171), and authorial privilege
through narrative techniques and discourses associated with authenticity and truth.
2. Restoration Fiction: Romances, Life-Writing and the
Nouvelle
English prose fiction of the early years of the Restoration presents an extraordinary
variety of genres and hybrid, innovative texts, “though no major English novels
appeared” (Turner 2017: 73). It was an age “dominated by experimentation and
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lack of coherence [out of which] comes coherence and certain stability” (Bayer
2017: 6), a time when the distinction between popular romance, historical text
and novel differed from our current notions (McKeon 1985: 162-163). To
understand the extent of Villedieu’s innovative storytelling in England, it is
necessary to survey the production of fiction in England, specifically high
romances and (auto)biography, since the former was superseded by the shorter,
more realistic nouvelle, while the latter endeavoured to offer factual life accounts
of notorious characters, mainly criminals.
During the Commonwealth, as Victoria Kahn has argued, “in Herbert’s […]
Princess Cloria (1653-1661), […] Richard Brathwaite’s Panthalia (1659), and
William Sales’s unfinished Theophania (1655), we find considerably more
scepticism about the arcadian dimension of the romance. Instead, it becomes an
analytical tool for reflecting on the causes of the war and the contemporary crisis
of political obligation” (2002: 627). In the early 1660s, though Mackenzie’s
Aretina (1660) also reflected upon legislation and politics, English high
romances explored less serious matters, mostly related with conflicts of love and
loyalty. For example, Pordage’s Eliana (1661) debates the nature of friendship
and love, and Bulteel’s unfinished Birinthea concentrates on Cyrus’s dilemma
between his love for the slave princess and his loyalty to his uncle Cyaxares, King
of the Medes. Yet the genre, which drew heavily on verisimilitude and analysed
the characters’ psychology, was firmly established among readers and writers
alike, as shown by the numerous successful reprints and translations of French
heroic romances, and, especially, by John Dauncey’s The English Lovers (1661-
1662), which novelises Thomas Heywood’s two-part play, The Fair Maid from the
West. Characteristic of heroic romances, Dauncey structured the narrative using
an in-medias-res approach and a multiplicity of narrators instead of reproducing
the play’s linear plot and single, heterodiegetic narrator — two of the main
structural features that would come to distinguish the nouvelle. Strikingly,
however, by the end of the decade, high romances fell out of fashion. Only Roger
Boyle, at the request of Queen Henrietta Maria, published the sixth instalment
of Parthenissa in 1669; however, he tactfully put an end to the series on the
grounds that “I did once design to have Ended Her story in this Book” (Orrery
1676: Xxxx4r), even though the romance (808 folio-pages long) was left
unfinished. Nonetheless, unlike in France, the fascination for this genre and its
royalist ideals lingered in England long after 1670.
The 1660s saw the creation of several imaginative texts within the life-writing
genres, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction by combining factual
events with persuasive styles and techniques meant to reinforce credibility, or at
least convey the impression of factuality. Perhaps because of prejudices
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surrounding gender or honour, or both, the (male) narrator in The Life and Death
of Mrs. Mary Frith (alias Mal Cutpurse, and the model of Middleton and Dekker’s
Roaring Girl) told the adult life of this peculiar picaresque hic mulier (c.1584-
1659) by using the editor-narrator technique, whereby he pretends to be
publishing a “diary”, which he claims to be “of her own” (1662: 26-27). The
author of Youth’s Unconstancy (1667, attributed to Charles Croke) chose to call
himself Rodolphus and tell the story of his life in the third person, thus distancing
himself from his younger, roguish self. Only John Bunyan seems to anticipate the
style of the nouvelle when he claims that the truth and sincerity of his spiritual
autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, were more fittingly
rendered in “plain and simple” (1666: A5v) than adorned or elevated language.
Unreliability haunts the narrators of criminals’ biographies, who claim to have
witnessed certain events and to have obtained documents and reports from
creditable informants, as if they were engaged in a kind of (proto-)journalistic
activity. These narrators also discuss the truthfulness of dubious accounts and
hearsays, whereby the ‘I’ of the narrators may show up at any time throughout.
For example, an account of the case of James Turner was printed not only in the
minutes of the court proceedings, but also in two short chapbooks. Issuing a
warning about the fate awaiting thieves, The Triumph of Truth aimed to
distinguish fact from rumour and calumny. The narrator, for example, tells of two
letters in an attempt to reinforce his credibility, and addresses certain rumours
such as this one suggesting cannibalism: “one thing is known to many for a truth
[…], his preserving some of the Fat or other parts of the Corps of divers persons
lately executed for Treason, […]” (The Triumph of Truth 1663: 31). As a postscript,
the author refers to a forthcoming publication about Turner, warning readers
about the falsehoods it may spread (1663: 32). Likewise, the narrator of the new
version, The Life and Death of James Commonly Called Collonel Turner, has the
same purpose and also discredits the previous one (1664: 13-14).
Lastly, William Winstanley’s The Honour of the Merchant-Taylors, about
condottiero Sir John Hawkwood (c. 1320-1394) in Italy, may illustrate the
transition from the romance to the historical novel in England, even though Paul
Salzman fittingly classified it as a piece of “popular non-chivalric fiction” (1985:
378). Indeed, literary conventions that characterise the romance pervade the
portrayal of the hero, while the story, based on chronicles, is presented as “a real
truth, though imbelished with such flowers of Poesy as I could gather out of
Apollo’s Garden, that thou mightest be won with delight in the reading thereof”
(Winstanley 1668: A4v).
In England, the nouvelle historique and nouvelle galante emerged —and eventually
took hold— in this context of the decline of the heroic romance and the rise of
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life-writing. These two kinds of nouvelle are often treated indistinctly, as their
main concern is love and their setting a relatively recent past. Notwithstanding
their similarity, Paul Salzman has argued that the nouvelle galante places more
emphasis on intrigue and love affairs, and less on the characters’ psychology than
the nouvelle historique (1985: 309-310). La Fayette’s The Princess of Monpensier is
traditionally regarded as the pioneer of the historical and the psychological novel
both in France and England. Since the name of the heroine was the same as a
high-profile public figure, the French bookseller remarked in the prefatory note
to the reader that the story was not the publication of a manuscript from historical
times but rather an invention of the author, who preferred to name “his [sic]”
protagonists after historical people instead of romance characters (1666: A4v,
A5r). The English translator, however, made the story ambiguously authentic
when, in his note preceding that of the French bookseller, he claims to have
begun work on the translation only when the original publisher assured him that
it was not fiction but a factual account; and many readers may have believed it to
be biographical. The Princess of Monpensier was not published in English again
until the twentieth century, which suggests a modest reception, probably owing
to La Fayatte’s radically innovative method that, as Esmerin-Sarrazin explains,
“combines history and fiction and overlaps them so much that it becomes
difficult to distinguish one from another; […] thus offering a redefinition of the
concept of vraisemblance” (2016: 87). It, however, paved the way for the variety
of prose fiction genres that emerged in the last three decades of the seventeenth
century. Amorous adventures and scandalous histories, among others,
contributed positively to the transition from the romance to the novel in
England, thus widening the existing stream of realistic fiction brought into
being by the picaresque genre, moral short stories such as John Reynold’s highly
popular The Triumph of God’s Revenge (1621-1635), Spanish and Italian tales,
and the novels of Scarron, who, in addition to his own production, appropriated
stories authored by Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, Alonso Jerónimo de Salas
Barbadillo and María de Zayas.
3. The Annals of Love
As had happened in France, the English version of Annales Galantes (Paris:
Claude Barbin, 1670. 12º) appeared anonymously, although Villedieu
acknowledged that the book was hers in 1671 in the prefatory note to the fifth
part of Journal amoureux (Grande and Keller-Rahbé 2006: 16), which was not
translated into English. The Annals of Love, Containing Select Histories of the
Amours of Divers Princes Courts, Pleasantly Related was translated by Roger
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L’Estrange (Cottegnies 2022: 52) —genuinely rendering the narratives, tone and
style of the source text— and published in London by John Starkey in 1672, in
octavo (Wing reference D1187A; ESTC reference R11570). All eight parts are
included in a single volume comprising the twenty-one stories (or sections),
“containing only matters of Courtship”, as she states at the beginning of the second
part (1672: 53). Unlike the heroic romances, neither the character nor the country
names are coded, and none of the events are from ancient times. The spatial-
temporal scope of the collection spans Europe, North Africa and the Middle East,
from the tenth century to the early modern period.3 Not only does Villedieu
superbly accomplish a kind of textual cabinet of curiosities of courtship, seduction,
love affairs and situations recorded or suggested in post-classical chronicles and
history books until that time, but also produces an astonishing typology of
psychological —especially female— portraits of royal and aristocratic lovers, most
of them ancestors of seventeenth-century European sovereigns.
Villedieu’s book marks a significant innovation in English prose fiction in terms
of the source and nature of her stories and characters, her historian-like stance,
language style and narrative technique. If verisimilitude or realism are considered,
The Annals of Love brought to English fiction a convincing illusion of factual
storytelling and truth, partly because “the historical basis is much more accurate
and becomes far more reliable” (Grande 2021: 71, my translation).4 The fact that
most of her characters were both real people and the subject of history books
establishes a crucial ontological difference with the realistic fictional characters in
picaresque narratives or in John Reynolds’ stories of homicides in his Triumph of
God’s Revenge. At the beginning of the preface, Villedieu insists on the authenticity
of her accounts and explicitly attacks certain contemporary “intrigues” that
blatantly misrepresent history, perhaps referring to narratives such as The Princess
of Monpensier or her own Loves Journal (1671), when she asserts that her stories
“are no witty and facetious Inventions, exhibited under true Names (of which
kind I have seen lately an ingenious Essay) but faithful touches taken out of
History in general” (1672: A2r). In addition, by narrating post-classical historical
events featuring members of Mediterranean and other European royalty and
related stately dignitaries, she not only establishes a radical opposition to the
romances of La Calprenède and Scudéry, which were mostly set in ancient times,
but also contends that her new type of narrative takes an altogether different
stance in selecting the ‘adventures’ and ‘accidents’ for the plots, and modulating
the style of the narrative voice. In the story of “Constance, the Fair Nun”, for
example, when the protagonist and her lover (Frederick Barbarossa’s son) must
take their leave, Villedieu marks a key difference between her literary style and
that of the heroic romance by maintaining the neutral, historical tone when she
makes reference to heroic romances in explaining her refusal to describe her
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characters’ emotional storms: “This place would make a marvellous Ornament for
a Romance, and I should have a great care how I past it over in silence, were this
a Romance, and not a History; but the style of Annals do not suit with Rhetorical
Ornations, and therefore I shall refer my curious Reader to the passionate partings
in Cirus or Clelia” (1672: 96). In statements such as these, Villedieu not only
explains the features of her “annals” as a distinct genre, but also aims to elucidate
what pertains to the heroic-romance effects of verisimilitude and what to the
purported authenticity of her stories of gallantry. Such narratives of courtship are
obviously not devoid of picaresque elements. These features are most conspicuous
in the series of García Fernández stories, in which a pilgrim seduces his wife and
both escape to Paris, and in “The Fraticelles” when the friars, “Seeing then this
Clutter and publick Ostentation of Love [in the streets of Rome all night long],
had been the cause of so much disorder, […] resolved to carry on theirs privately,
and à la Sourdine, without giving any more occasion of Jealousie than needs
must” (1672: 114). This picaresque spirit resonates with the narrative tone that
Grande has described as deliberately light: “the tone is deliberately light and
meant to please a complicit readership that knows how to appreciate the game of
historical distortion and delights in it” (2021: 70, my translation).5
3.1. History and The Annals of Love
To a certain degree, The Annals of Love could be compared to the work of
Henry Fielding, who was convinced that he was practising and exploring new
ways of novel writing. Like Fielding, Villedieu explains the nature and
characteristics of her work —the annals and, by extension, the nouvelle galante—
both in the preface and the body text. The preface, called a “true manifesto of the
nouvelle historique” by Keller-Rahbé (2010: 127, my translation),6 opens by
explaining the nature and sources of the content. She states that “these Annals of
Love are really History, whose Fountains and Originals, I have on purpose
inserted in the ensuing Table” (1672: A2r). Although containing several
inaccuracies (Keller-Rahbé 2010: 132), this table of bibliographical references at
the end of the preface reveals the intertextual link between the stories and their
sources, while the reader is encouraged to contrast the historical hypotexts with
the novelist’s expanded rendering of them (1672: A4r).7 Both the bibliographical
list and the author’s comments on her treatment of each source reinforce the
authenticity of the stories while asserting their imaginary nature. Therefore, as
Keller-Rahbé has stated: “the reader is invited not to rely excessively on the
sources but to be guided by the author, who presents herself more as a true
novelist and less as a historian” (2010: 132-133, my translation).8 In fact, Villedieu
makes it clear that her fabrications of facts range from writing “almost word for
word out of that chronicle” (1672: A4r) in “James King of Arragon”, fleshing out
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fictional versions of the historical sketch —as in the three about Count García
Fernández of Castile— to inventing entire plots, as she acknowledges that “the
Amour of Nugnez is suppositious” (1672: A4v). However, the list only covers the
first four parts, which are the ones initially published, whereas no reference is
made to the sources of the last four. In the latter, Villedieu further distances her
writing from a historical account as she, for example, imagines Jacaya’s life
(claimed to be Sultan Mehmet III’s son, who must have either died as a young
child or never existed), and foregrounds autobiographical elements in the story of
“Feliciane”, as she crossdresses to search for the man who seduced her.9
Villedieu also declares that her stories do not attempt to depict contemporary
people or events —or, in her words, “a scheme of our present Hyprocrisie” (1672:
A2r)— as earlier high romances often did by encoding character identities and
place names. Nevertheless, she seems to hint that this possibility should not be
thoroughly dismissed: “If in the Conferences and Passages I have invented, there
happens any resemblance with the Intrigues of our Age, it is no fault either in the
History or in me, that was writ long before I was born” (1672: A2v). Yet Villedieu’s
method of embedding political satire in fiction differs from roman-à-clef
narratives. Indeed, her innovative book of princely love affairs and scandals has
been read as a sly attack on Louis XIV’s policy of centralising power: “Their [La
Fayette’s and Villedieu’s] contempt for royal authority […] voices a post-Frondean
nobility’s resentment of Louis XIV’s efforts to curtail its powers, and women
found their agency particularly constrained” (Watkins 2016: 260).10 Although
the French monarchy is never directly attacked (except in “The Countess of
Pontieuvre”), Villedieu is unforgiving in her critique of the Iberian kings, from
whom Louis XIV descended through his mother, Philip III’s daughter Anna of
Austria. “Harlots they were both” (1672: 36) is the narrator’s description of
García Fernández’s wives. Incest and infidelity taint the depiction of Alphonse
VI’s daughters in “The Three Princesses of Castile”, and, in “Jane Supposed of
Castile”, impotent Henry IV of Castile is shown soliciting an heir from his wife
through adultery consented by the three parties: “She pretended great horrour at
the first Proposition, that she might have the pleasure of being pressed; and the
King did her that kindness, he prest, he intreated, and his Election concurring
with the Queens, the good Monarch conducted the Count de Cueva to the Royal
Bed with his own hand” (1672: 311).
Although the English translation contains eight wise maxims in verse in addition
to many more poetical compositions, the instructive or moral sense of Villedieu’s
collection is problematic —or, as she says, “never so irregular” (1672: A3r)—
when depicting the immorality of certain historical actions and characters,
especially religious and female. On the one hand, she claims, “I might interlace,
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and inlay my Examples with profitable Precepts, I observe this Maxime in all of
them, to punish Vice, and reward Vertue” (1672: A3r), which, in 1670, Daniel
Huet described as “the chief end of a Romance”, or “Fictions of Love-Adventures”
in general (1672: 3), while, on the other, as in the examples regarding the Spanish
monarchy, her narrator does not seem compelled to judge immorality and impart
instruction because of her supposedly truthful, objective fidelity to history.
However, she explicitly claims to have modified one of the stories to make it less
morally offensive to readers when she remarks that the “custom of promiscuous
injoyment in all sorts of people, without choice or distinction”, introduced by
Dulcinus and Margaret in Lombardy, was toned down in favour of “the changing
of Husbands and Wives” (1672: A4v). This likely explains why the sequel to the
story of Dulcinus and Margaret, “Nogaret and Mariana”, is the only I-narration
in the book (Mariana being one of the women that Margaret interrogated),
though in the end the latter couple does not divorce but reunites.
In relation to the story of Nogaret, who was not a character of royal extraction, it
is worth highlighting the incidental comment about letters and nuns at the
beginning of “Constance the Fair Nun”: “there have been Letters seen in our days
which have taught us, that of all people in the World, none make Love with that
confidence and freedom as the Nuns” (1672: 82). This could refer to the letters of
Heloise and Abelard, published in Latin in 1616 and popularised at the end of the
seventeenth century, but most probably to anonymous Lettres portugaises, by
Gabriel-Joseph de Lavergne Guilleragues (although for a long time attributed to
Portuguese Marianna Alcoforado) —and entitled Lettres d’amour d’une religieuse
portugaise in subsequent editions— which was first published in France in 1669,
and translated by Roger L’Estrange in 1678 as Five Love-Letters from a Nun to a
Cavalier. Stories with ordinary characters such as these seem beyond her scope of
historical personalities and, thus, of her apparent neutrality at judging their love
affairs and morality — unlike in picaresque and criminal stories, whose purpose
was also the readers’ moral instruction.
Her imaginative expansions of historical episodes involve the addition of what she
calls “some ornaments to the simplicity of History” (1672: A2r). These ornaments
mainly consist of settings and dialogues that give voice to those silenced by
history (1672: A2v), because such accounts of courtship or love affairs would be
unpardonable digressions in serious history books: “I have not memories to trust
to”, she says, “but my own fancy” (1672: A2v). To justify the objectivity of those
fanciful recreations of facts, Villedieu appeals to the universality of human love
and loving throughout time. She argued that if her words and dialogues “are not
what they really spake, they are at least what they might” (1672: A2v). Likewise,
she systematically obliterates tragedies, crimes and catastrophes that do not fall
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into the range of matters acceptable for her annals, and suggests that the reader
consult the “chronological history” (1672: 51) to learn about them. For example,
at the end of the story “Don Pedro King of Castile” (Pedro the Cruel), she
explains that “The rest of the Reign of Pedro de Castile is so repleat with Murders
and Cruelties of all sorts, that I could not describe them without falling into a
Tragical recitation, which I have always carefully avoided” (1672: 204). The
Annals of Love thus generates a parodic, alternative kind of history, since the
chronology is not determined by reigns or wars, but by the accumulation and
sequence of courtship stories throughout time: “The Chronology of History not
according exactly with the Chronology of Love, there are some years in which no
amorous Intrigues are to be found, and there are others in which all the considerable
Accidents are Love” (1672: 53). By doing so, Villedieu as implied author, as
organiser of the level of the story, separates herself from the imposition of history
to generate an alternative pattern, which perfectly suits her creative supplements to
historical records, and to attain her chief purpose of pleasing the reader as the last
word of the preface emphasises: “[…] the intention of the Author, who meant no
more than their [the readers’] divertisement” (1672: A3v). Much of the readers’
pleasure arises from their necessary cooperation with the narrator in reconstructing
the historical ‘adventures’ of love.
3.2. Narrative Technique in The Annals of Love
On listing her sources, Villedieu also generates a spectrum of different degrees of
faithfulness to history, from downright precision to sheer invention. This
fluctuating relationship between historical sources and novelistic fabrications not
only shows the flexibility of Villedieu’s faithfulness to fact, but also anticipates
the intense activity expected from the reader — or the narratee, since there is
little difference between the style and tone of the authorial voice of the preface
and source list, and the narratorial voice of the stories. Indeed, as never before
in English fiction (as far as we know), Villedieu’s narrator often addresses
readers to suggest that they either look for further information or co-operate in
the construction of the narrative world — both actions helping to invigorate the
illusion of reality that characterises the nouvelle.
The equivalence between the implied author and the narrator is most evident in
statements about the structure and design of the book’s stories and parts and its
commentary on historical facts. Indications such as the following were common
in high romances: “And now let us take our leave of our new Emperour and
Empress, and take a fresh turn about the World, to see if we can find any new
Adventure in that Age, that may be fit to close up our Annals of this year” (1672:
106). What is uncommon, and indeed innovative, even in The Princess of
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Monpensier, are Villedieu’s metanarrative comments on the features of her
Annals, especially concerning the theme of courtship and the alternative pattern
of organising history, while she frequently suggests the reader consult books to
obtain a full depiction of the period, as if the imaginary scenes of the stories were
—if not complementary— at least compatible with the chronicles: “I refer the
Reader to the History itself to be informed of all the Occurrences. The Annals of
Love observe only the more remarkable Passages, and represents them without
any regular Order” (1672: 285). Remarks about historical facts, either to grade
their rarity and incredibility,11 or to express her views on them,12 not only increase
the narrator’s storytelling competence, but also transport the elements of wonder
to the level of plain reality. This new depiction of wonder in English fiction may
explain why The Annals of Love prompted John Dryden to pen two comedies:
“Nogaret and Mariana” inspired the character of Doralice in Marriage à la Mode
(1673), while “Constance the Fair Nun” provided the serious plot of The
Assignation; or Love in a Nunnery (1673) (Langbaine 1687: 6-7). Indeed,
Villedieu’s collection contains several stories that certainly contributed to the
emergence of subgenres of fiction in addition to the nouvelle historique and
nouvelle galante such as the oriental tale and the “Scandal Chronicle/Secret
History” (Salzman 1985: 368), and to the dissemination of stories like that of
Agnes de Castro (Cottegnies 2022: 52).
Restoration romance writers paid careful attention to their narrators’ competence
and reliability. The frame-stories are conventionally human-like focalisers that
stand close to the main characters and thus report what is objectively perceived
from an external perspective. Therefore, thoughts, emotions and feelings are only
conveyed through action, gestures, dialogues, monologues, letters, poems, notes
and even through psychosomatic symptoms like fever and other bodily reactions.
The remote past events (i.e. individual stories) are told by homodiegetic narrators,
either their protagonists or witnesses. Similarly, writers of life accounts also
struggled to attain authenticity and, thus, credibility through technique and
textual resources. The anonymous author of one of the biographies, The Triumph
of Truth (1663), claims on the title page to offer an “exact and impartial relation”
of Turner’s life told by himself to “an intimate friend” before the execution. In
addition to the different reports, the author also includes several letters with the
sole purpose “to confirm the truth of these passages” (The Triumph of Truth
1663: 16). Those narrative voices of the English heroic romances and life accounts,
though competent and likely honest, are not completely trustworthy since all
I-narrators are unreliable.
The teller of The Annals of Love exemplifies the narrators that Susan Lanser has
described as “virtually ‘raised’ to the ontological status of historical authors,
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and this semireferential voice is presumed to be communicating the perspective
—the imaginative and ideological consciousness— of the author” (1981: 155).
The narrator is thus endowed with omniscience and other authorial privileges
over the narrative world, an exceptional characteristic in the fiction of the early
years of the Restoration outside satirical works or manifestly unlikely stories.
Besides guiding the reader through the structure and organisation of the
stories, the narrator often explores the characters’ interiority with verbs of
mental activity, sometimes through several sentences13 and other rhetorical
strategies, such as euphemisms, in refusing to articulate what she only pretends
to know: “the Marquess retired to his own Appartment, so confused and
transported with rage, I cannot without crime repeat the flagitious designs he
had at that time in his head” (1672: 246). Moreover, the narrator occasionally
undertakes activities that, in theory, correspond to the implied author. For
example, instead of summarising the content of a letter, she claims to have
translated it from the Spanish (1672: 77), questions the capacity of history to
convey absolute and impartial truth,14 and discusses certain differences between
the romance and her annals, while justifying part of her narration:
A Romantick Author would not fail to have made him conquer his Enemy, and given
the Empire to the Exploits of his victorious Arm; and not without reason, for right
being on his side, why should Fortune be against him? however he performed what
a man of Courage could possibly do in defence of his Title; but in despight of his
Bravery and diligence, he was wounded, defeated, and had much ado to escape the
pursuit of his Enemies; I take the liberty notwithstanding to inlarge, and intersperse
his Adventures with such Accidents as are least incompatible with the History.
(1672: 382)
More radically, the narrator does not hide the fictional nature of the annals. She
openly names a character: “[…] his Astrologer (which we shall call Abdemelec)”
(1672: 64) and, as the author informed about fictitious Hortensia in the preface,
she also makes clear in the body text that she is producing the imaginary life of a
son to Sultan Mehmed III, who died in infancy: “Jacaya, whose History I am
writing” (1672: 380), and of yet others that, like the African woman who fell in
love with King Sebastian of Portugal, has simply been invented:
I do not think the Reader requires further light in this Adventure, I have inlarged it
much to what it is represented in my History, and I assure my self there are many
who believe they have perused all the Memoires of that Age, to whom this Princess
of Morocco is every where a stranger, except in the Annals of Love. (1672: 379)
The narrator often invokes relatively recent historical chronicles, memoires and
manuscripts. These registers both intensify the truthfulness of the story,15 which
is, thus, necessarily realistic, and pinpoint the ‘amorous intrigues’ that her annals
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imaginatively shape. The success of this depends on the reader’s willingness and
ability to enliven the fictional appendixes to the historical records. When the
narrator at times bridges the temporal gap between the present and the historical
past, and reports as if she were witnessing the event,16 it is the reader who sees and
constructs, as Monika Fludernik has argued (2009: 7). The highly self-conscious
narrator of The Annals of Love persists in demanding that the reader not only see
and imagine,17 but also think, understand and judge.18
4. Conclusion
As part of the general objective of broadening the understanding of the
transnational formation of the English novel in the transition from the romance
to the nouvelle, this article has specifically drawn attention to Villedieu’s claim to
historicity and narrative technique in The Annals of Love, translated in 1672. This
work was the first in Villedieu’s collections of stories on historical characters and
was followed by many others, including The Loves of Sundry Philosophers and
Other Great Men (1673), The Disorders of Love (1677) and The Unfortunates
Heroes [Les Exilés] (1679). In addition to the works of Scarron, La Fayette and
Villedieu’s own, The Annals of Love helped consolidate the nouvelle (galante and
historique) and contributed to the emergence of other subgenres (“scandal
chronicles” and “secret histories” among them), relegating the heroic romance to
the past. Nonetheless, the masterpieces of the nouvelle, such as Saint Réal’s Don
Carlos (1674) and La Fayette’s The Princess of Cleves (1678), were yet to come.
Even if they can be broadly considered “historical romances about love and
betrayal at various European courts”, as Watkins has suggested (2016: 260),
Villedieu conceived her “annals” as a distinct kind of fiction, self-consciously
departing towards forms now associated with the novel.
Villedieu explains her treatment of history, both in the preface and in metanarrative
comments in the body text. To this purpose, she provides a list of references with
which the reader may contrast her sources with her stories of courtship and love
affairs; but, while supporting their authenticity, she also grades their faithfulness,
thus generating a spectrum from literal fidelity to complete invention (mostly in
the last stories) and, in the process, creating multiple ways of attaining a pervasive
sense of plausibility. Compared to the English high romances, which were often
set in antiquity or in an unidentified past, her stories take place in post-classical
times (from the tenth century to the early modern period); therefore, many
protagonists were ancestors of seventeenth-century royal and aristocratic families.
Villedieu explicitly concentrates on seduction and love, dismissing serious matters
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of political concern. This method of complementing history, however, arouses a
sense of moral ambiguity because her apparently objective narration stealthily
betrays a rather personal mode of assessing her royal or noble characters and their
lovers, insomuch as her suggestions of admiration or contempt are disguised as a
simple rendering of history. In this regard, though she avoids moral judgement or
instruction, she embeds her criticism in The Annals itself and its picaresque
elements, and in the plain style imitating the language of history to recount
compromising and scandalous events, either facts or suppositions, especially
about the monarchies of the Iberian Peninsula.
The influence of history prompts the rejection of certain features typical of
heroic romances that distort reality (such as outpourings of passionate emotions
and the excessive idealisation of the main characters). However, her annals do
not adhere faithfully to the boundaries of the history-book truth (which is also
questioned), but rather imaginatively complement it. In this respect, Villedieu
patterns an alternative chronology determined by sequences of courtship affairs,
assumes a historian-like role and puts into practice narrative strategies associated
with omniscience. As part of the creation of an atmosphere of authenticity, she
rejects the figure of the unreliable narrator (typical of both the English heroic
romances and the biographies of criminals) to reinforce her narrator’s privileges
so as to make her equivalent to the implied author, not only by contriving and
orchestrating the illusion of historical truth, but also by proposing that the
reader (sometimes compellingly) co-operate with her in animating these
illusions, albeit simultaneously —and paradoxically— being reminded of their
imaginary nature. As has been illustrated, for example, the narrator claims to
have consulted several books about particular stories, analyses the characters’
minds (one of the most significant technical innovations), and is allowed to
name secondary characters, or invent characters and full stories — especially in
the last parts of the collection. By this point, Villedieu’s readers must have been
persuaded to both accept and enjoy her ingenious fabrications from history,
which, as she emphasises in the last word of the preface, were ultimately devised
for their “divertissement”.
Acknowledgements
This article is a result of the research project “Las mujeres y la novela inglesa
temprana, 1621-1699: El contexto europeo / Women and the Early Novel in
English, 1621-1699: The European Context” (Wom-En), funded by Junta de
Andalucía (Ref. PROYEXCEL_00186).
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Notes
1. For the influence of translation
on the English novel see McMurran (2010),
especially chapter one: “Translation and the
Modern Novel” (27-43).
2. “sont plus Galantes
qu’Heroïques”.
3. These are the stories, indicating
the number, title, century, place, sovereign/
ruler involved and first page: 1-2 “The
Countess of Castile” and “The Pilgrim” (10th,
Castile, Count García Fernández, 1 and 4); 3
“Alfreda of England” (10th, England, King
Edgar, 14); 4 “Don Garcias of Spain” (10th,
Castile and France, Count García Fernández,
30); 5 “The Duke and Dutchess of Modena”
(10th, Empire of the West [Aachen], Otho the
Great, 37); 6 “The Three Princesses of Castile”
(11th and 12th, Leon, Galicia, Castile and
Portugal, Alphonso VI of Leon and Castile, and
his daughters Urraca, Theresia and Elvira, 53);
7 “Constance the Fair Nun” (12th, Rome,
Frederick Barbarossa, 81); 8 “James King of
Arragon” (13th, Aragon, James I, 106); 9 “The
Fraticelles” (13th and 14th, Rome, Pope
Boniface VIII, 113); 10 “Dulcinus King of
Lombardy” (13th and 14th, Lombardy, Pope
Clement V, 156); 11 “Nogaret and Mariana”
(13th and 14th, France, Guillaume de Nogaret,
statesman to Philip IV of France, 163); 12 “Don
Pedro King of Castile” (14th, Castile, Peter I,
185); 13 “John Paleogolus Emperour of
Greece” (14th, Byzantine Empire, John V, 205);
14 “Amedy Duke of Savoy” (15th, Savoy,
Amadeus VIII, 223); 15 “Agnes de Castro” (14th,
Portugal, Peter I, 251); 16 “The Countess of
Pontieuvre” (15th, France, Charles VII/Louis XI,
262); 17 “Feliciane” (15th, Tunis/Castile, Count
Arevalo/reign of Henry IV of Castile, 286); 18
“Jane Supposed of Castile” (15th, Castile,
Joana of Castile “la Beltraneja”, 310); 19 “The
Persian Princes” (16th, Persia. Twin sons to
Ismail I, 310); 20 “Don Sebastian King of
Portugal” (16th, Kingdom of Marocco and Fez,
Sebastian I, 355); 21 “Jacaya a Turkish Prince”
(17th, Ottoman Empire, Constantinople,
Greece, Poland and Florence, Mehmed III’s
son who is claimed to have survived, 380). For
their plot summaries see Cuénin (1979).
4. “l’ancrage historique est
beaucoup plus précis et devient nettement
plus fiable”.
5. “le ton est délibérément léger,
fait pour plaire à un public complice, un public
qui sait apprécier le jeu de la déformation
historique et qui s’en amuse”.
6. “véritable manifeste de la
nouvelle historique”.
7. On the list, the name “Ramire
XVI. Roy d’Oviedo & IV. De Leon” in the
French original (Verdier 1663: biij/v), and
“Raymire sixteenth King of Oviedo, and
fourth of Leon” (1672: A3v) in the English
version, may be confusing since there was no
Ramiro XVI, but Ramiro III, which could be
that 16th King of Oviedo and 4th of Leon.
Though the author’s name and the page are
missing in the reference, the itemised source
contains the political and warfare
achievements of the Count of Castile García
Fernández, after which Gilbert Saulnier du
Verdier adds a brief report about his unhappy
marriages — Villedieu’s object of interest
(1663: 269-270).
8. “le lecteur est invité à ne pas se
fier excessivement aux sources et à s’en
remettre à l’auteur, qui se présente moins
comme un historien que comme un vrai
romancier”.
9. As Grande and Keller-Rahbé
have remarked, “the autobiographemes take
the form of haunting images and motifs, such
as that of a clandestine marriage” (2006: 25,
my translation) (“les autobiographèmes
prennent la forme d’images et de motifs
obsédants, que l’on songe par exemple à ceux
du mariage clandestin”).
10. René Démoris has also
described the rise of nouvelle historique and
galante in France as both a consequence and
resistance to Louis XIV’s absolutist monarchy
(1983: 27).
11. “Let not the reader be surprised
at this kind of Vow” (1672: 31); “Examples of
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this kind are rare” (1672: 37); “His misfortune
was too common to be incredible, but the
circumstance with which it was accomplished,
was beyond all belief” (1672: 78-79).
12. “And thus I have given you the
Commencement of this year, not so eminent
for Love, as it promised in appearance. These
six persons had almost no sooner seen one
another, but they were married, and no sooner
married, but they differed, so that this place
would be more proper for an Historical
Abridgment, than the Introduction of an
amorous Intrigue” (1672: 55); “and indeed I
am of opinion” (1672: 68); “And I am apt to
believe with many great Authors” (1672: 355).
13. “She thought that
Circumstance would make the Emperour
believe that she which spake to him was a
Lady of that Rank, and so thinking her
unworthy of his Company, leave her to her
self, but it fell out quite contrary. Frederick
indeed judged of her as she had presaged, but
that opinion made his desires more violent:
for finding them accompanied with hopes,
from their conception, he gave himself wholly
up to them without either fear or discretion;
he considered Constance afresh, her shape,
her air, the sound of her voice, the quickness
of her Eye, and the Pleasantness of her Wit: All
of them were as charming in appearance, as
they were in effect: and flattering his
imagination with a thousand fantastical
Chimera’s, he took his leave of her, the most
enamoured Person in the World” (1672: 87).
14. “But there are few Memoires
which attribute that to Constances Gallant,
which History imputes to the Protector of the
Antipope: and thus it is the great Affairs of the
World are secretly carried on: They have all
several faces, and we see nothing but as the
partiality or ignorance of the Historian
represents” (1672: 103).
15. The stories are replete with
references to history such as “History has
represented this Lady so beautiful, it will be
needless in me to describe her” (1672: 23);
“Margaret his Wife (called in History the
Volupuous [sic]) […]” (1672: 157).
16. “It was pleasant to see the
terrour the poor Countess was in” (1672: 66);
“It was a pretty piece of Grotesque to see this
famous Fraticel […]” (1672: 153).
17. “It is not necessary to insert
how the fair Widow resented so foul an action.
I should have exprest the affection she had for
her Husband but weakly, if the Reader could
not imagine the extream sorrow she
conceived for his death” (1672: 51); “I suppose
there is scarce any Reader but imagines it,
without my description” (1672: 152).
18. “I leave it to the Reader to
judge how much […]” (1672: 49); “There is no
Reader I suppose so ignorant, but he knows
what the Spanish History reports of Leonora”
(1672: 310).
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