Plotless history? Historical representation in Frondeur memoir

This dissertation examines the memoirs of Madame de Motteville, La Rochefoucauld, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and the Cardinal de Retz who wrote accounts of what they saw and did during the four-year rebellion known as the Fronde (1648--1652). These Frondeur memoirs would appear to exemplify particular as opposed to general history writing because they shy away from overarching arguments and seem to accumulate anecdotes rather than trace a chain of reasoning. Motteville insists that she merely compiles her recollections. La Rochefoucauld asserts that he seeks only to reveal little-known facts about his Frondeur exploits. Mademoiselle de Montpensier reminisces to alleviate the boredom of exile. Finally, the Cardinal de Retz adopts a conversational form that seeks only to delight his interlocutor. This study, however, reads these four authors' metadiscourse critically and asks whether their texts are truly the descriptive chronicles they purport to be.;In these Frondeur memoirs, literary elements such as metaphor, thematic repetition, and emplotment, traditionally considered ornament or stylistic flourishes, convey an argument and order the mass of particular facts into a coherent whole that constitutes a reflection on metahistory, or the broad, general patterns in human history.;The results of this examination show that a vision of decline, stasis, stagnation, and decay predominates in all four of these memoirs. Motteville sees a world of vain appearances; La Rochefoucauld develops the incompatibility between romance's confidence in human agency and the course of events he recounts. Mademoiselle de Montpensier traces the decline of her noble "house," while Retz presents a rhetorical world where ever-shifting arguments triumph over truth. Far from being idealizing accounts that valorize their authors, as most critics have concluded, these memoirs in fact accurately reflect the triumph of the centralized monarchy, the eclipse of the aristocracy, the extinction of noble houses, and the death of chivalric values in post-Fronde France. Furthermore, these four memoirs demonstrate that particular and general history writing are false distinctions since the particular form of the memoir does indeed harbor a generalizing, argumentative discourse.