Draft:Marianne Alissan de la Tour




Marianne Alissan de la Tour
Portrait de Marianne Alissan de la Tour
Born(1730-11-00)November , 1730
Died(1789-09-07)September 7, 1789
NationalityFrench
Known forAuthor

Marianne Alissan de la Tour was a French writer born in 1730. She died on September 7, 1789. She was the daughter of Jean Baptiste Merlet de Foussomme and the wife of Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Alissan de La Tour (b. 1727); the marriage was unhappy and the spouses separated[1].

Biography

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She is mostly known for exchanging letters with Rousseau. She was an admirer of his works and they wrote to each other from 1761 to 1776.

Her letters contain many figures borrowed from the previous century, but also many from La Nouvelle Héloïse, in view of a usage that had been in the process of being codified only a few decades earlier. Mme de la Tour, a model correspondent, ‘good student’ and assiduous reader of Rousseau, is an example of those unknown ladies who helped to establish the form of epistolary exchanges by drawing inspiration from literature, illustrating Habermas's theory that in the mid-eighteenth century the spheres of the public and the private were mutually fertile.[2]

She was author of Précis pour M. J.J. Rousseau, en réponse a l'Exposé succinct de M. Hume[3] (1767) and Jean Jaques Rousseau vangé par son amie, ou Morale pratico-philosophico-encyclopédique des Coryphées de la secte[4] (1779).

One of her portrait, by Gilles Louis Chrétien, is exposed at the National Gallery[5]

References

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  1. ^ "Electronic Enlightenment: Marie Anne Alissan de la Tour [née Merlet de Foussomme]".
  2. ^ "Jean-Jacques Rousseau-Marianne Alissan de la Tour, ou le Pygmalion renversé". March 2012. pp. 309–320.
  3. ^ "Exposé succinct de la contestation qui s'est élevée entre M. Hume. Et M. Rousseau, avec les pièces justificatives".
  4. ^ Jean Jacques Rousseau vangé par son amie ou Morale pratico-philosophico-encyclopédique des coryphées de la secte. 1779.
  5. ^ "Marianne Alissan de la Tour - National Portrait Gallery".