The Correspondence of Italian-French Noblewoman Marie Mancini (1639-1715): A Digital Edition

FAIN: FT-270715-20

Sarah Nelson
University of Idaho (Moscow, ID 83844-9803)

Research and writing leading to digital publication of the transcriptions, translations, and annotations of approximately 25 letters written by Italo-French noblewoman Marie Mancini (1639-1715) as well as the creation of the project website.

Creation of a public website containing my transcriptions, translations, and annotations of 20-25 letters by Marie Mancini (1639-1715), as well as an analytical introduction. Mancini’s correspondence offers a window on the conditions of early modern women’s lives that other famous women letter-writers of the age do not provide, because Mancini also published a memoir. I produced the only modern English edition of her memoir, including extensive annotation. The comparison of her public and private writing allows analysis of her conscious fashioning of a public image and her strategic deployment of that image. The website will be a useful resource for scholars of literature, early modern women’s lives, gender studies more broadly, and European diplomatic history. It also has the potential to attract a broad audience of non-specialist readers, drawn by the dramatic adventure of Marie’s life and enticed, by rigorous scholarship and the author’s authentic voice, to further exploration.

Associated Products

The Letters of Marie Mancini (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: The Letters of Marie Mancini
Author: Olivia Wikle
Author: Sarah Nelson
Abstract: Marie Mancini (1639-1715) was famous as the first love of Louis XIV of France, and later she and her sister Hortense became scandalous celebrities by running away from their husbands and traveling unaccompanied through much of Western Europe. Marie’s unpublished letters to Lorenzo Colonna (her estranged husband) and others reside in an Italian archive. This project will publish them online. Begun in Spring 2020, this project seeks to publish Marie Mancini's approximately 900 letters that are held in the Colonna Archive, Library of the Abbey of Santa Scolastica, in Subiaco, Italy. There are approximately 100 transcribed letters currently available so far, six of which have been translated into English. Ultimately, the goal of this project is not only to provide a space for Marie Mancini's voice to be freely accessed, but also to provide avenues for historical exploration. To this end, users may: Explore and read the letters; Browse Marie's correspondence in chronological order; View her travels across Europe; Download the letters' text for further research. ...with more options to come!
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://thecdil.github.io/mancini_source/
Primary URL Description: This URL leads to the website under construction. It has not yet been published. PLEASE NOTE: Acknowledgment of NEH support for the project will be included on the homepage of the website when it is published.
Access Model: Open access

She Said: Publishing a 17th-Century Woman's Correspondence Online (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: She Said: Publishing a 17th-Century Woman's Correspondence Online
Abstract: The historical study of women’s lives often requires the piecing together of disparate and partial evidence mined from archives. Happily, archives are now being put online, which both removes barriers to access and offers powerful new approaches to searching and visualizing content. This presentation will introduce the audience to the project of publishing online the correspondence of 17th-century Italian-French noblewoman Marie Mancini, with a dual focus on the content of the letters and on the creation of the website for their publication. Marie Mancini (1639-1715) was famous as the first love of Louis XIV of France, and later she and her sister Hortense became scandalous celebrities by running away from their husbands and traveling unaccompanied through much of Western Europe. Though she steadfastly refused to return to her husband in Rome, Marie carried on a regular correspondence with him, and her letters are held in the Colonna family archive, which resides in the library of the Benedictine monastery of Santa Scolastica in Subiaco, Italy. Her husband Lorenzo Colonna’s letters to her have been lost due to the circumstances of her itinerant life, and so what we have is a one-sided conversation through which to attempt a reconstruction of the chess match between Marie and Lorenzo, and its intersection with the broader concerns of international diplomacy. Project leader Sarah Nelson and assistant Alessandro Martina will discuss the discoveries and remaining mysteries in the letters they have so far transcribed and translated. Library faculty member Olivia Wikle and research assistant Liam Marchant will discuss the choices and challenges involved in the creation of the project website, with a demonstration of the tools that allow varying chronological and spatial visualizations of the material.
Author: Alessandro Martina
Author: Sarah Nelson
Author: Olivia Wikle
Author: Liam Marchant
Date: 10/6/2020
Location: University of Idaho (remotely delivered talk, due to COVID-19 pandemic)
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Vf05_qSY4
Primary URL Description: Recording of the October 6, 2020, presentation as part of the Malcolm Renfrew Interdisciplinary Colloquium at the University of Idaho. Presentation title: "She Said: Publishing a 17th-Century Woman's Correspondence Online." PLEASE NOTE: NEH support for the project is acknowledged at the start of the presentation (04:30-04:45).

Marie Mancini Writing for Her Life (Article)
Title: Marie Mancini Writing for Her Life
Author: Sarah Nelson
Abstract: If Marie Mancini, niece of Louis XIV's chief minister Cardinal Mazarin, has come down through the ages, it has been because of her youthful love affair with the king and the scandal she caused later. She and her sister Hortense fled their marriages and travelled together and separately – but unaccompanied by the train their station demanded and unauthorised by their husbands – across western Europe. They sought merely an independent existence. Marie Mancini was a reader, writer, and précieuse, but her surviving writings were produced in service of her real-life circumstances. This article explores Marie's tactics in pursuit of autonomy. It examines her delicate position as she sought to argue her case; it maps the strategy of her published memoir and describes the particularity of her authorial voice; and it takes the measure of her success in staking a claim, both in her own time and in ours.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20563035.2021.1898863
Primary URL Description: Full article published online, with open access.
Access Model: Open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Early Modern French Studies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Online (Early Modern French Studies)

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