Dominique Vivant Denon

female heart but open her bedroom door, beyond which, however, the reader does not pass. Seduction was a sophisticated game and its point was style and wit. Its coded preciosity was regularly revisited, ambiguously by Laclos and enthusiastically by Vivant Denon (1747–1825), whose faultless Point de lendemain (1777) is perhaps its finest hour. Many, however, reacted against this essentially courtly amusement. La Morlière’s Angola (1746) mocked its linguistic artifice and Dorat’s Les Malheurs de l’inconstance