ABSTRACT
Claude-Catherine de Clermont, duchesse de Retz (1543–1603), stands at an important juncture in the continuum of salon history. Her mother-in-law, Marie Catherine de Pierrevive (c. 1500– 1570), was known for her salon in Lyon during the 1520s and 1530s. Her young cousin, Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet (1588–1665), would host the most famous salon of the seventeenth-century. Retz, too, was lauded for entertaining her circle in ways that both reflect the earlier Franco-Italian traditions of Lyonnaise société mondaine and anticipate those of the précieuses. Consideration of texts that allude to Retz’s status as a proto-salonnière illustrate ways that game-playing, conversation, and the championing of key vernacular literary styles cross boundaries of periodization to serve as foundational elements of salon history.
