Prologue: Boudoir and tribune -- A faded coquette: Marivaux and the Philosophes -- Fakes, impostors, and Beaux esprits: conversation's backstage -- The sly and the coy mistress: style and manner from Fénelon to Diderot -- Capturing fireside conversation: Diderot and Marivaux's stylistic challenge -- Grace and the epistemology of confused perception -- Between Paris and Rome: Montesquieu's poetry of history -- Montesquieu for the masses, or implanting false memory -- Everlasting theatricality: Arlequin and the untamed parterre -- Epilogue: The costume of modernity
