This is the first novel I've ever attempted on my own, and worse than that: my first historical. I am astounded day-to-day at how much research is involved in writing it. Naively, I had thought that after 15 years of researching la Maupin's life I was prepared to write her story. Sure, there were bound to be incidents that I'd have to create and details to fill in, but I thought that I knew the story, cast and setting.
As I started to marshal my researches, I found that many of the peripheral characters were important historical personages in their own right, and that I'd done very little in researching them. Then, too, there was the problem of daily life having changed in in 300 years and 3,500 miles. And all the best sources are not only in French, but archaic French, and I still don't speak the language. (God bless on-line translation services.)
It soon became clear I needed better tools to organize my research and to rope the willing into giving me a hand. After a few false starts, ably assisted by my sons and partners in Eldacur Technologies, this site was born, and vioila! Still, we're just getting started. Please bear with me.
Comments (2)
As one unemployed guy to another, I hesitate to recommend purchases, but I have just run across a review of a book that could be useful research material to you: "The Secret Wife of Louise XIV: Franoise d'Aubigne, Madame de Maintenon," by Veronica Buckley. See
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/15/books-secret-wife-louis-xiv/
The reviewer complains that Buckley tends to lose track of her ostensible subject, getting lost in fascinating by-ways of social history. But that would serve your purpose very well.
What I might do in your position is wait until used copies show up on Amazon.com and buy one of those.
Remarks:
The reviewer remarks that Buckley doesn't take de Maintenon's religious faith seriously. I'm sure you wouldn't project modern secularism onto la Maupin, but I just wonder if you have given any thought yet to what her religious views are.
Glancing through the dates in the article reminded me that Louis XIV was on the French throne and CharlesII on the English when Newton published his Principia and modern physics began. I don't usually associate Newton with Louis, so that always gives me a bit of a shock. (Should matters scientific intrude on la Maupin's story at all -- which seems unlikely -- the current height of French science is Rene Descartes.)
I don't think anyone was playing word games, but "Madame de Maintenon" is almost "Madame de Maintenant," which would be "Lady of Now," or "Lady of From Now On" or "Lady of the Moment" perhaps. Dunno if anyone was sending a message there or not.
Since you know me, you may be shocked to hear that I recently bought a double CD of an Opera that is being shipped to me from Switzerland. (Don't let out the secret that the opera star's biographer doesn't like opera, OK?) It turns out that Tancrede has almost never been recorded, and that the cheapest version I can find is to by straight from the vendor in Switzerland, who doesn't charge shipping world-wide rather than buy it from them through Amazon. Still, imported opera while unemployed? Not very JimB.
I've added the book to my Amazon wishlist, which since the family has massively scaled back our celebration of the commercial holiday of Xmas, may not have much effect, but we will see. It is already showing up used through Amazon for $17, which is considerably less than my opera.
As to religion, no, I don't plan on making her either a modern secularist or a Deist. I haven't thought too deeply about her religion, except to say that the burning of convents does not bespeak a deep respect for the church at the very least. One might be tempted to think that her bisexuality and promiscuity bespeak a lack of faith, except that in the upper classes both were quite common. Monsieur, the duc d'Orleans was infamously gay, and the King kept the fact that he married Maintenon secret, not that she was his mistress. The King and his brother were the centers of fashionability. So it is quite possible to be very devout and/or very partisan in the Catholic/Huguenot conflict and have what we would regard as very loose morals. (Perhaps I can work in the cross dressing Abbe?)
She ends up retreating to the convent, which was also something of a fad among opera divas, which suggests a certain amount of faith, in context.
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