Friendship and Didacticism in The Memoirs of Fanny

Abstract

The study is a reinterpretation of The Memoirs of Fanny: on the one hand it focuses on the protagonist’s female friend, Baroness L., while on the other hand it explores two aspects of its intellectual context. The first half of the study examines the narrative function of Baroness L. within the framework of the discourse on refinement, while the second half offers an analysis of the relationship between Baroness L. and Fanny within the framework of the European history of friendship. My two main conclusions are the following: first, that Baroness L. may have been the anonymous contributor who published the Memoirs; and second, that Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse had a strong influence on shaping the friendship between Fanny and Baroness L.