Playing Proverbs with Madame de Genlis

The theatrical genre known as the proverbe dramatique, which flourished as a pastime of French high society during the late eighteenth century, has often been understood through the written exemplars left by the author and artist Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle. Yet Carmontelle’s literary contributions to the genre have obscured the vast range of activities known as jouer des proverbes (playing proverbs)—activities associated especially with women—which included conversational games, pantomime, poetry, dance, and music making. Attending to the many descriptions of jouer des proverbes left by Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de Saint-Aubin, the Com­tesse de Genlis, reveals that the literary proverbe dramatique is best viewed as an extension of jouer des proverbes, not as a genre, but as a practice—one that Genlis used to advance her own agendas of self-education, social advancement, and creative expression. The multitalented Genlis used proverbs as a form of educational theater as well as in the context of salon conversation, simultaneously displaying her skills in speaking, music-making, and dance. This article offers a wide-ranging history of the practice of jouer des proverbes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ultimately considering Genlis’s descriptions to elucidate both the proceedings of eighteenth-century salons and the experience of women as they exercised their creativity, artistry, and sense of play.