2024/02/08 by Annalisa Nicholson · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical Art and Culture Studies #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #Historical and Literary Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/20563035.2024.2308811
openalex publication_date 2024/02/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
This article explores the activities of the Mazarin salon, which was established in 1676 by two French exiles, Hortense Mancini, duchesse de Mazarin, and Charles de Saint-Évremond, in London. Serving as a space that connected French expatriates with writers, diplomats, politicians, and artists from the hostland, the Mazarin salon became a distinguished site of Anglo-French exchange despite rising tensions between England and France and so showcased the rich possibilities of a space outside the limits of an absolutist structure. With reference to the writings of Saint-Évremond and Jean de La Fontaine, as well as the Blenheim Papers at the British Library, the article follows the words – translated, reworked, debated – that caught the attention of habitués to see how the micro-world of this salon-in-exile came into contact with the wider world around it and, more broadly, to reveal how this activity formed a project of queer anti-absolutist resistance.