The Perraults in the Countryside

Always in need of credit, financiers had to project an image of wealth, and literature became a means for supporting this avenue of mobility. The Perraults entertained other notables and men of letters in their country house at Viry, and spread their reputation through poems that described the sumptuous dinners held there. This chapter argues that Charles’s entry to the world of letters was motivated by the need to augment the reputation of Pierre, whose career in finance peaked in those years. This analysis, coupled with a study of later representations of the Perraults’ social and literary life in this period, serves to present a nuanced view of the hotly-debated concept of the “salon” as applicable to seventeenth-century literary life.