| dc.description.abstract | Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (1699-1777) was a famous salonière in the eighteenth century France. One of her well-known salons which was held every Monday, called Lundis, was a gathering in her hôtel on the rue Saint-Honoré of amateurs, art collectors, painters, and sculptors. Madame Geoffrin was also a patron of art; she supported artists and commissioned many artworks. Her Lundis not only established the contact between talented artists and high society collectors, but also provided occasions for her own artwork commissions. According to Jürgen Habermas’ concept of a “public sphere”, Mme Geoffrin’s another salon, receiving the most influential philosophers and Encyclopédistes every Wednesday, could be seen as a kind of “Enlightenment Salons”, which was opposed to the court and absolutism.
In the present thesis, the author aims especially on Mme Geoffrin’s social role as salonière in the ancien régime, and how the sociability worked in the salon institution. In the nineteenth century, writers and critics emphasized that this most influential salonnière was of a bourgeois class. However, salonnière as Mme Geoffrin truly reaffirmed the aristocratic institution of the Old Regime, demonstrating that qualities of politeness and civility helped stimulate and regulate intellectual discussion. Mme Geoffrin’’s salons substantiated the aristocratic conception of the social and political role played by women of the Old Regime. Therefore, the actions she took to gain access to le monde, including her interests in art and her art patronage, demonstrated the role of salonière as mediator between the high society, the middle and lower classes.
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