Deshoulières used her writings to defend philosophical naturalism.
Like her intellectual model Lucretius, she employed verse to argue
that natural causes can adequately explain such apparently spiritual
phenomena as thought, volition, and love. In metaphysics, Deshoulières
argues that the real is comprised of variations of matter and that
material causation adequately explains observed changes in the real.
In anthropology, she claims that the difference between animal and
human is one of degree, not of kind. Material organs, and not the
occult powers of a spiritual soul, produce such human phenomena as
thought and choice. In ethics, she insists that such instincts as
self-preservation govern the virtuous activity customarily ascribed to
an elusive free will. In particular, she emphasizes that the human
phenomenon of love, endlessly debated in the salons she frequented,
owes far more to instinctual attraction and repulsion than rationalist
philosophers would admit. A friend and disciple of Pierre Gassendi,
she constructed a distinctive chapter in Renaissance naturalism and in
its struggle against the philosophical alternatives of Aristotelianism
and Cartesianism.
1. Biography
Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde was born into an aristocratic
Parisian family on January 1, 1638. Her father Melchior du Ligier,
sieur de la Garde, occupied a prominent position in court circles as a
chevalier de l'ordre du roi. He served as maître d'hôtel for Queen
Anne of Austria, the wife of Louis XIII, and performed important
services for the queen mother Marie de Médicis, the regent of France.
Even by the standards of the court aristocracy, Mademoiselle du Liger
de la Garde's early education was unusually sophisticated. She learned
Latin, a rare achievement for a woman of the period, as well as
learning Spanish and Italian. She studied the fashionable novels of La
Calpranède, Urfé, and Scudéry, though she would later dismiss the
novel as an inferior species of literature. Through her tutor Jean
Hesnault, Du Ligier de la Garde became a partisan of philosophical
naturalism. A disciple of Pierre Gassendi, Hesnault argued that all
human action, like all movement in the cosmos, could be explained by
physical causes. The tutor allied his metaphysical naturalism to
religious skepticism (which is opposed to the thesis of the
immortality of the soul), and also to ethical libertinism, which
celebrated the rational pursuit of pleasure as the supreme moral good.
Hesnault deepened this apprenticeship of naturalism by guiding Du
Ligier de la Garde's reading of the major texts of Gassendi and of the
classical Latin philosopher Lucretius.
In 1651 Du Ligier de la Garde married Guillaume de la
Fon-de-Boisguérin, seigneur Deshoulières. By all accounts, the
marriage was an aristocratic alliance of convenience that permitted
the spouses to pursue separate lives. A military officer attached to
the Prince de Condé, Seigneur Deshoulières was embroiled in the Fronde
(1648-1653), the intermittent civil war that pitted the French throne
against dissident aristocrats, led by Condé. During the beginning of
her husband's war-related exile in the Lowlands, Madame Deshoulières
studied philosophical works at her parent's home in Paris. Her renewed
study of Gassendi confirmed her allegiance to the philosophical
naturalism she had imbibed from Hesnault.
In 1656, Madame Deshoulières joined her husband in exile in Belgium.
Due to her persistent efforts to obtain the back pay owed her husband,
she was imprisoned at the chateau of Wilworden in 1657. After a daring
rescue by her husband, the couple fled to France, where they received
a personal pardon from Louis XIV. Their reintegration into French
society was quickly followed by the collapse of their marriage. In
1658, Seigneur Deshoulières successfully sued for a permanent
separation of goods and persons. Declaring bankruptcy, he consigned
his few remaining assets to his creditors. An impoverished Madame
Deshoulières faced a grim social future in the anomalous position of a
woman who was neither single, divorced, nor truly united to her legal
husband.
Despite her penury, Deshoulières began her literary ascent in 1658
when she began to conduct a salon in her modest apartment on the Rue
de l'Homme armé in Paris. The salon quickly attracted a coterie of
authors noted for their libertinism: Benserade, Des Barreaux, Ménage,
Quinault, Pellisson, and La Monnoye. In 1662, she published her first
poem: a portrait of the skeptic Linières. An influential arbiter of
literary disputes, she defended the modernist party in the querelle
des anciens et modernes over the comparative merits of classical and
contemporary French literature. A partisan of Corneille, she led an
ill-fated campaign against the drama of Racine.
In 1672 Deshoulières published her first nature idyll in Le Mercure
galant. Acclaimed as a poet of the first rank, Deshoulières published
a flood of poetry during the next two decades. Her works explored the
theme of nature and man's immersion in it. Many of her more
philosophical poems demonstrated how physical instinct is the cause of
the intellectual and volitional activity philosophers wrongly
attribute to a spiritual soul. Her poetry dealing with flora and fauna
denied a substantial difference between human beings and other species
of the organic world. In recognition of her literary achievement and
philosophical prowess, the Academy of the Ricovrati of Padua (1684)
and the Academy of Arles (1689) elected her to membership. Despite
being banned from membership due to her gender, Deshoulières received
recognition from the Académie française. During the inauguration of
Fontenelle as a member in 1691, Académie officials recited poetry of
Deshoulières as part of the official proceedings. Louis XIV granted
her an annual pension of 2,000 pounds in 1688, consecrating her status
as one of the nation's leading authors.
In 1682, as Deshoulières showed the first symptoms of breast cancer,
her poetry become more austere. Her older pastoral poetry yielded to a
more abstract analysis of the characteristic virtues and vices of
human nature. Toward the end of the decade, Deshoulières reverted to
the Catholic faith of her youth. Her final poems, paraphrases of
psalms in the Latin Vulgate, renounced the skeptical views of her
earlier years and refuted a materialist explanation of human spiritual
activity.
Madame Deshoulières died from cancer on February 17, 1694.
2. Works
First published in 1687, the collected poetical works of Madame
Deshoulières demonstrated her literary dexterity. Deshoulières wrote
in multiple literary genres: ode, idyll, ballad, madrigal, rondeau,
portrait, maxim, biblical paraphrase, comedy, tragedy, and opera
libretto. Immensely popular throughout the eighteenth century, her
poetry underwent twenty distinct editions until the final edition of
her complete works in 1810. The odes, pastorals, and satires no longer
charmed a literary public avid for the more bombastic fare of
Romanticism.
Anthologies of French poetry routinely include several of
Deshoulière's poems as exceptional specimens of neoclassical nature
idylls. Many literary critics have noted the philosophical skepticism
that permeates Deshoulières's poetical exploration of nature. Antoine
Adam's argument is typical: "She [Deshoulières] had the reputation of
being foreign to all religious belief and her poetry seems in fact to
carry the reflection of this incredulity."
The philosophical reception of Deshoulières has been less consistent.
In the decades following her death, Deshoulières was acclaimed as a
bold philosophical thinker who prepared the path to the religious
skepticism of the Enlightenment. In his influential Dictionnaire
historique et critique (1696; 1702) Pierre Bayle discusses the
skepticism of Deshoulières concerning human immortality: "It is
certain that anyone who spoke this way literally would be denying the
immortality of the soul. But to save the honor of Madame Deshoulières,
let's just say that she was following certain poetical conventions we
are not supposed to take too seriously—not that one can't hide a good
deal of libertinage under the privilege of versifying." Veiled in his
characteristic irony, Bayle's judgment clearly pegs Deshoulières as a
libertine skeptic. In their respective correspondences, both Voltaire
and Rousseau praise the work of Deshoulières.
Subsequent history of philosophy has largely ignored Deshoulières.
Just as her antiquated genres of expression closed her work to
literary audiences after the French Revolution, her non-treatise style
of argument masked the philosophical nature of her work. Only in the
recent feminist expansion of the philosophical canon has the properly
philosophical nature of Deshoulières's work imposed itself anew.
3. Philosophical Naturalism
In the poetry written until her reconversion to Catholicism,
Deshoulières defends a comprehensive philosophical naturalism. Her
metaphysics conceives the world as an interactive network of
atomically structured bodies. All phenomena, including the human
phenomena traditionally interpreted as spiritual, could be explained
in terms of material causation. Her theory of human nature denies a
substantial difference between human beings and nonrational animals.
The alleged human differences, such as the power of intellection and
volition, for her suggest the comparative inferiority of human nature.
Her ethical theory claims that alleged moral virtues are in fact the
outcroppings of physical instincts. Deshoulières's naturalism is
normative as well as descriptive. The complete immersion of the real
(which includes the human person) in nature demands a respectful
treatment of the natural environment.
a. Metaphysics
The clearest expression of Deshoulières's naturalistic metaphysics is
found in her early work, "Imitation of Lucretius." Faithfully
following De Rerum Natura by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius,
Deshoulières depicts the universe as founded on a simple, original
principle of matter. "The order of an extrinsic cause/ Makes, by
invisible moves,/ Enter into the form of various bodies/ All the
sympathy described by academics." This material principle of the
cosmos requires a divine being, or an uncaused cause, to bring it into
existence. Once matter exists, however, its internal principles and
activities account for the subsequent evolution of the universe. This
matter already has present within it the attraction and repulsion
("the sympathy") that will create, destroy, and alter the various
bodies that will proceed from this material matrix.
This vitalist material cosmos is an atomic one. "Imitation of
Lucretius" explains how the atomic structure of the universe and of
the discrete bodies that emerge from this universe causes change
through the charged interaction of the atoms. "These atoms conjoined
with the light,/ By their extreme fluidity,/ Are always in communion/
With the governing essence." Just as the entire universe experiences
flux through the dynamic interaction of its material parts which
undergo the rhythm of attraction and repulsion, each distinct body
represents a microcosm where change occurs through alteration of
internal atomic structure due to incessant encounters with external
bodies.
In Deshoulières's metaphysics, the human person is not exempt from
this network of material causation and atomic change. Like other
bodies in the cosmos, human beings emerge from and are governed by the
same principle of matter. "In a cyclone of subtle matter/ Placing them
everywhere in inequality,/ The entire human race is the blessed
offspring./ Its multiplicity rises to infinity." Deshoulières insists
that the allegedly spiritual powers, and not only the physical traits,
of the human person can be explained by this material causation. The
activity of thought is caused by the functioning of the physical organ
of the brain, not by the impulses of an elusive spiritual power called
reason. "The more one examines, the more one digs/ Into the confusion
of what is true,/ Where particular individuals move in every way,/ It
is evident that our organs, rather than our reason, figure things
out." Careful examination of human intellectual activity reveals its
dependence on and origination in the physical organs of the body,
preeminently in the brain. "Imitation of Lucretius" repeatedly appeals
to the "envelope of matter" as the sole principle which explains the
actions and changes of the embodied beings (including human beings)
which populate the cosmos.
The naturalist metaphysics of "Imitation of Lucretius" indicates
Dechoulières's adherence to the atomic vitalism of Lucretius and
Democritus. It also indicates a more radical cast of naturalism in
comparison with that of her mentor Gassendi. Whereas Gassendi affirmed
the existence of an immortal human soul specially created by God in
light of the Beatific Vision, Deshoulières only briefly affirms the
existence of a god necessary for the initial creation of matter. Once
matter exists, its internal principles and activities are the unique
cause for the existence and constitution of all subsequent beings,
including human beings in their entirety. For Deshoulières, the real
is coterminous with material nature, even if this nature has a
decidedly lyrical character due to its fundamental dynamic of
attraction and repulsion.
b. Anthropology
In her poetry, Deshoulières explores the relationship of human nature
to the enveloping material nature of the cosmos. As she compares human
beings to other animals, she insists that the allegedly spiritual
activities of human beings can be explained by physical causation.
Rather than being superior to other animals, human beings are actually
inferior, inasmuch as they claim to possess a reason and freedom that
are in fact illusory. The mute obedience of other animals to natural
instinct compares favorably with the human propensity to
self-destruction in trying to create a future that vainly attempts to
alter the laws of nature. Traditional claims concerning human reason,
free will, and immortality are subjected to critical scrutiny.
The nature idyll "The Sheep" (1674) criticizes the faculty of reason,
which philosophers often exalt as the sign of human spirituality. In
actual exercise, reason appears to be subordinate to the senses and
the instincts possessed by all members of the animal kingdom. This
distinctively human power appears impotent when challenged by the
arational forces of passion. "This proud reason about which they make
so much noise/ Is not a sure remedy against the passions./ A bit of
wine disturbs it; a child charms it./ Ripping apart a heart that calls
it for help/ Is the only effect it produces./ Always important and
severe,/ It opposes everything but resolves nothing." Deshoulières
allies her critique of the claims of human reason to epistemological
skepticism. For all its vaunted power, reason habitually leads to
uncertain conclusions. Emotions govern the vacillating activity of
reason far more powerfully than philosophical defenders of the light
of reason would admit.
Like reason, free will is constructed on an illusion concerning the
difference between human and animal natures. For Deshoulières, perfect
freedom is found in following natural instinct rather than eluding it
in fantasies of alternatives to natural causation. The nature idyll
"The Birds" (1678) explains how authentic freedom is found in fidelity
to natural instinct. "Little birds that charm me!/ You want to love?
You love./ You dislike some place?/ You go to another./ You are known
neither for virtue nor for faults…There is no freedom except among
animals." Authentic freedom consists in the capacity to follow one's
natural impulse. The praise of the birds' freedom to love at will
suggests the libertinism of Deshoulières's intellectual milieu.
Later in the poem, Deshoulières explains that the only true obstacles
to freedom are physical ones, such as the fowler's net. Human freedom,
the chimera of free will that produces "virtues and faults," is
illusory. Human agents claim to exercise free will to create a future
that could have been otherwise. In actual fact, natural causation
dictates future outcomes that cannot be altered by human wish.
Deshoulières's critique of free will as a human illusion rests on a
deterministic theory of action that interprets human acts, as well as
animal movements, as the product of physical causes.
In the same poem, Deshoulières extends a similar critique to the human
phenomenon of love. Rather than being specific to human beings and
rooted in the human possession of a will, love exists among all
animals in their various expressions of attraction and repulsion. For
her, the entire physical universe is built upon this amatory
structure. "If Love were not mixed into this change [of the landscape
from winter into spring],/ We would see all things perish. Love is the
soul of the universe. As it triumphs over the winters,/ Which desolate
our fields by a rude war,/ It banishes the chill from an indifferent
heart." Rather than being limited to the realm of the human psyche,
love governs the entire movement of atoms as they effect change in the
cosmos. The affectivity of the human heart is not superior to the
physical forces that surround it. Like the seasonal changes of the
cosmos, alterations in human temperament are directed by the play of
external natural powers.
The illusory exaltation of the intellect and the will is rooted in a
false conception of the human soul. "Ode to La Rochefoucauld" (1678)
contests the theory of a human soul that would exist independently of
the body. Deshoulières insists that everyday experience clearly
demonstrates the interpenetration between body and soul. "Although the
soul is divine,/ Invisible connections unite it to the body./ Does the
soul have some bitterness?/ The body beats itself and consumes itself/
And shares its anguish./ Is the body a captive of pain?/ The soul no
longer feels joy./ It itself weakens as the body does." The strict
parallel between the mental state and physical state in the human
person indicates the identity between soul and body. The thesis of a
spiritual soul existing independently of the body is rejected as an
illusion, and is contradicted by the empirical evidence of the soul's
reciprocal dependence on the body.
In many passages, Deshoulières draws the explicit conclusion that the
human individual cannot be immortal from her denial of a transcendent
human soul. She argues that the psyche of the human person is governed
more strictly by the laws of material nature than most philosophers of
the period would concede. "The Flowers" (1677) compares the inevitable
death of the human person to the extinction of flowers after a brief
existence. In both cases, the death undergone is total. "Sad
reflections! Useless wishes [of immortality]!/ When once we cease to
be,/ Lovely flowers, it is forever. One fearful instant destroys us
without exception." While human beings might experience a metaphorical
survival after death as "a faint memory of our names conserved by our
society," this mnemonic after-life is clearly not the survival of the
personal soul. In Deshoulières's demythologized account of human
nature, the denial of personal immortality is the most radical of her
efforts to demonstrate the complete circumscription of human nature
within material nature.
c. Critique of Virtue
In criticizing the human pretension to superiority over nature through
its alleged possession of reason and free will, Deshoulières devotes
particular attention to the human claims of moral virtue. In her later
works, she operates an umasking of virtue as the simple operation of
natural instinct. What is often claimed to be a moral attribute
developed by free will is revealed to be the natural reaction of an
embodied subject to particular stimuli in his or her material
environs. Her epigrammatic "Diverse Reflections" (1686) typifies this
demythologization of virtue. She critically analyzes three moral
virtues in particular: wisdom, prudence, and courage.
Philosophers often claim that wisdom is acquired by human beings as
they age. This virtue is alleged to be the fruit of careful reflection
on alternative courses of action. Unlike the rashness of youth, this
cautious thoughtfulness frees the elderly to abandon certain dangerous
habits that compromise their health. According to Deshoulières,
however, this enlightenment is more instinctual than intellectual. "We
believe we've become wise/ When, after having seen the autumnal fall
of leaves more than fifty times,/ We abandon the dangerous use of
certain pleasures./ We delude ourselves./ Such changes are not the
work of free choice./ It is only the pride cloaking humanity/ Which,
using every pretext/ Gives to the cause of virtue/ What we owe to the
cause of aging." As the human body ages, with the concomitant risk of
illness and accident and the growing risk of death, the human agent
instinctively moderates the use of dangerous drink or food or sport.
This instinctual moderation owes far more to biology than to any
deliberate choice. The alleged virtue of the elderly derives more from
the natural reaction of the body to the threat of destruction, than to
some mysterious internal act of election.
Similarly, the capstone moral virtue of prudence is little more than
the instinctual exercise of common sense in the face of imminent
peril. The alleged virtue might permit the moral agent to foresee
danger but in and of itself it can not remove that danger. The common
estimate of prudence gravely exaggerates the power of human reason and
will to create the future. "The incense we give to prudence/ Leads my
mood to despair./ What is its purpose? To see in advance/ The evils we
must endure./ Is it such a benefit to predict them?/ If this cruel
virtue had some certain rule/ That could remove them from us,/ I'd
find the worries it gives bearable enough,/ But nothing is so
misleading as human prudence./ Alas! Almost always the detour it
takes/ In order to help us avoid a looming misfortune/ Is the path
that takes us right to it." Like the praise of other alleged virtues,
the esteem for prudence overestimates the scope of human agency. While
the human agent can detect dangers in its immediate environment, it
can do little to alter that environment since it is bound by the laws
of material nature, and so its future course is largely determined by
the causative activity of that nature.
The cardinal moral virtue of courage is similarly dismissed as the
product of sensible self-protection rather than of heroic freedom.
Deshoulières attacks the courage of classical pagan warriors often
lauded in the pedagogical literature of the period. The politically
motivated suicides of disgraced civic leaders in the classical era are
a predictable response to an unbearable physical and emotional
environment. "We scarcely recognize ourselves in discussions of
courage/ When we elevate to the rank of the generous/ Those Greeks and
Romans whose suicidal deaths / Have made the name of courage so
famous./ What have they done that is so great? They left life/ When,
after crushing disgrace, Life had nothing pleasant left for them./ By
one single death they spared themselves a thousand." The suicide of a
disgraced politician awaiting imminent arrest and probable execution
reflects rational self-interest rooted in the instinct for sparing
oneself greater pain than immediate death. There is nothing
particularly surprising nor meritorious in executing such an act. In
the circumstances, it could not have been otherwise.
In her demythologization of virtue, Deshoulières manifests the
comprehensive scope of her naturalist conception of human nature.
Virtue and vice, allegedly the manifestations of free will, are simply
the instinctual reactions of the moral agent to the stimuli of pain
and pleasure in his or her environment. Prudence, courage, temperance,
and justice permit one to negotiate the perils in one's surroundings
in the interest of self-preservation. The repertory of virtue is not
different in kind from the various defensive responses to threatening
stimuli evinced by the other members of the animal kingdom as they
confront the challenges of the material cosmos.
d. Environmentalist Ethics
Deshoulières's philosophical naturalism includes a deontology (or
ethics of duty) as well as a metaphysics. It is not anachronistic to
claim that Deshoulières defends an environmentalist ethics. The total
dependence of humanity upon nature requires the human agent to treat
the material environment with respect. A properly naturalistic concept
of human nature emphasizes the duty to reverence the cosmos that is
humanity's sole origin and end. Conversely, a rationalistic exaltation
of humanity as set over and above material nature by dint of its
allegedly superior reason justifies the subordination and destruction
of nature.
In Deshoulières's primitivist account of history, humanity reverenced
nature in the first stages of its development. Ancient gathering
societies respected the material world they gently used for their
rustic lifestyle. "Ode to La Rochefoucauld" evokes this
environmentalist golden age. "In that happy country when without
prejudice/ Morals were permitted to run freely,/ Humanity was not
avid/ For riches and honors./ It lived on wild fruit,/ Slept under
open-air blankets,/ Drank in a clear stream./ Without goods, without
rank, without envy/ It entered the tomb/ As it entered life." This
primitive humanity in tranquil communion with nature possesses its own
politics. It is an egalitarian as well as frugal society. Its
spontaneous moral life free of the constraints of social prejudice
contains Deshoulières's habitual libertine accents.
In modern society, technology has turned humanity into nature's enemy.
The human enterprise of land clearage, farming, dams, mines, and
canals has disfigured material nature. "The Stream" (1684) argues that
human exaltation of its allegedly superior reason has justified this
domination and destruction of nature. "It is humanity itself that
tells us that by a just choice/ Heaven placed, when it formed human
beings,/ the other beings under its laws./ Let us not flatter
ourselves./ We are their tyrants rather than their kings./ Why do we
torture you [the streams]?/ Why do we shut you up in a hundred
canals?/ And why do we reverse the order of nature/ By forcing you to
spring up into the air?" The error of rationalism in refusing to see
humanity as a part of nature is not a purely theoretical one; by
exalting humanity as a rational being superior to the rest of nature,
it has justified the human destruction of the environment as a species
of moral good. This critique of environmental destruction also
reflects Deshoulières's religious skepticism. Clearly alluding to the
Book of Genesis's account of the divine grant of dominion over nature
to humanity, the ode argues that it was human pride rather than divine
inspiration that created such theological justifications for
environmental destruction.
Deshoulières proposes that justification for the destruction of nature
through an appeal to an illusory superior human reason has taken
dangerous political and religious forms in modern society. "The
Stream" criticizes the political claim to human rights since such a
claim often justifies the human mutilation of nonhuman material beings
that do not allegedly possess such rights. "Do not brag to me about
these imaginary goods,/ These prerogatives, these rights/ Invented by
our pride." Similarly, the theological claim that human beings are
made in God's image justifies the destruction of other creatures
allegedly not made in the divine image. "The more I see the weakness
and malice of humanity,/ The less of the divinity/ I recognize in its
image." Rather than enhancing human dignity and human moral conduct,
the claim of imago Dei actually increases human violence since it
justifies the destruction of the material environment in the name of
the ontological superiority of the human.
4. Interpretation and Relevance
Critical commentary on the works of Deshoulières has tended to
highlight two strands of her philosophy. Earlier philosophical
analysis (Bayle) underlined her religious skepticism, in particular
her denial of human immortality. Recent literary exegesis (Adam,
Lachèvre) has dwelt upon her libertinism. This approach has focused on
the neo-Epicurian justification of the pursuit of pleasure and the
avoidance of pain as a central ethical code in her works. It has noted
her ethical theory's critical distance from traditional Christian
morality, especially in matters of sexuality.
The limitation in these approaches lies in their relative lack of
attention to the broader naturalist metaphysics of Deshoulières. Her
religious skepticism is grounded on the metaphysical conviction that
the real is nothing other than the movement of material substance,
structured in atomic patterns. All claims of spiritual substance, with
the possible exception of an aloof deity who provides the initial
matter, are illusory. The claims for the existence of an immortal
human soul are part of a greater error concerning the nature of
reality itself. Similarly, her moral libertinism is rooted in a
naturalist conception of human nature. Since all mental activity is an
epiphenomenon of corporeal activity, specifically in the brain, moral
action rightly focuses on the preservation and care of the body. The
maximization of pleasure and the reduction of pain thus becomes an
imperative moral duty for the human individual and community. Her
neo-Epicurean moral principles rest on the naturalist thesis that
human nature is entirely immersed within the web of material nature
and that claims of human transcendence due to a spiritual soul are
erroneous. One of the challenges for contemporary exegesis of
Deshoulières is to excavate the naturalist metaphysics in which her
theological skepticism and utilitarian ethics are embedded.
Another challenge for contemporary analysis and appreciation of
Deshoulières's philosophy lies in the arcane genres in which she
expresses her theories. Like other philosophical salonnières of the
period, Deshoulières does not use the standard academic genre of the
treatise to state her claims concerning metaphysics, anthropology, and
ethics. If Lucretius's poetic version of philosophical argument can
challenge the contemporary student of philosophy, Deshoulières's
bewildering variety of poetical genres can overwhelm. The pastoral,
the ode, and the idyll no longer have currency in literary circles,
let alone in academic philosophical circles who determine the shape of
the philosophical canon. Patient literary analysis of these antiquated
forms is the necessary complement to a philosophical exploration of
Deshoulières's comprehensive naturalism. Behind the quaint quatrains
of the shepherds stand a substantial environmentalist metaphysics and
ethics.
5. References and Further Reading
All French to English translations above are by the author of this article.
a. Primary Sources:
Deshoulières, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde. Oeuvres de Madame et
de Mademoiselle Deshoulières, 2 vols.(Paris: H. Nicolle, 1810). [A
digital version of this edition is available online at Gallica:
Bibliothèque numérique on the webpage of the Bibliothèque nationale de
France.]
Deshoulières, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde. Poésies de Madame
Deshoulières (Paris: Mabre-Cramoisy, 1688). [A digital version of this
edition is available online at Gallica: Bibliothèque numérique on the
webpage of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.]
b. Secondary Sources:
Adam, Antoine. Les Libertins au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Buchet/ Chastel,
1986). [Adam studies the libertine milieu of Deshoulières and her
colleagues.]
Bayle, Pierre, Dictionnaire historique et critique (Rotterdam: R.
Leers, 1697). [Bayle discusses Deshoulières's skepticism in the
articles "Hesnault" and "Ovid." A digital version of this book is
available online at Gallica: Bibliothèque numérique on the webpage of
the Bibliothèque nationale de France.]
Conley, John. The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in
Neoclassical France(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002):
45-74. [The author analyzes and critiques the naturalism of
Deshoulières.]
Lachère, Frédéric. Les derniers libertins (Paris: E. Champion, 1924)
[Lachèvre discusses Deshoulières's salon as the link between the
skepticism of Montaigne and the free thought of the Regency.]
Perkins, Wendy. "Le libertinage de quelques poètes épicuréens à la fin
du XVIIe" in Laclos et le libertinage, eds. Pomeau and Versini (Paris:
Presses universitaires de France, 1983): 21-46. [Perkins analyzes the
neo-Epicurean ethics of Deshoulières.]
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