Abstract: Sixteenth-century Lyon's cultural encounters between Italy and France served as incubators for entertainment practices in its prosperous société mondaine. Women's participation in literary society illustrates how they engaged in intellectual play with their male contemporaries. Moreover, gatherings in printers’ abodes as well as the Académie de Fourvière and the home of Marie-Catherine de Pierrevive serve as examples for the ways that early twentieth-century scholarship demarcated Lyonnais sodalities as either brilliant humanist circles or intellectually suspect groups of fans of vernacular Italian literature and games, a seldom completely supportable dichotomy. In Poitiers the bureau d’esprit of the Dames des Roches provides a case in point, as it was a humanist salon but one that clearly engaged in vernacular poetry and games.

Keywords: Lyon, Poitiers, Marie-Catherine de Pierrevive Gondi, Dames des Roches, Estienne Pasquier

Lyon and Proto-Salon Society

When the Pierrevive-Gondi family was ascending in wealth and political power in early sixteenth-century Lyon, the city was home to a thriving, Italianate société mondaine in which men and women participated. It was marked by engagement in both humanist scholarship and vernacular poetry composition.