The staging of intimacy in the boudoir, a reflection of the reciprocal influences between literature and architecture in the 18th century

Abstract

The beginning of the 18^th century witnesses the emergence of an intimate realm in domestic spaces. The boudoir, through its size, its decor and its location in the private apartments contributes to this movement. It is however characterized by a dichotomy between openness and closure which is opportune to the staging of this newly conceptualized intimacy. It thus offers a dramatic quality to libertine novelists who set it as a literary topos. The boudoir becomes the allegory of a tension between the public sphere and the private sphere. Novels cannot be red as a faithful testimony of the manners of the time. But they reflect the values attached to domestic spaces, to which the aristocratic concept of representation is still very present. Showing how accurately novelists understand the aspirations of the contemporary society, boudoirs in novels have themselves sometimes become a source of inspiration for architects and decorators. These mutual influences are noticeable in the way both architects and novelists interpret the subject of nature. This theme is particularly meaningful because, as an heritage of the 17^th century, it is associated with the idea of a retreat. Allowing to experience solitude, retreating precedes the advent of intimacy. Patterns inspired by nature are thus, both in architecture and literature, invested with a symbolic dimension. Theorists, writers and architects successively play with that symbolic heritage, recomposing the effects of nature in their works. The necessary transposition in an artificial setting this approach supposes underlies a reflexion on the relationship between reality and artificiality.