The French literary style called préciosité (, preciousness) arose in the 17th century from the lively conversations and playful word games of les précieuses (), the intellectual, witty and educated women who frequented the salon of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet. Her Chambre bleue (the "blue room" of her hôtel particulier) offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionalism and coarse manners of the royal court during the regency of Louis XIV. One of the central figures of the salon that gathered at the Hôtel de Rambouillet was Madeleine de Scudéry. She wrote voluminous romance novels that embodied the refinements of preciosité including the concepts of feminine elegance, etiquette and courtly Platonic love that were hugely popular with female audiences, but scorned by most men, including Molière, who satirized the précieuses in his comedy Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). The "questions of love" that were debated in the précieuses''' salons reflected the "courts of love" (fictional courts which judged lovers' behavior) that were a feature of medieval courtly love. None of the women ever actually used or defined the term Précieuse themselves. Myriam Maître has found in préciosité not so much a listable series of characteristics "as an interplay of forces, a place to confront and resolve the tensions that extended through the century, the court and the field of literature". In assessing the career of Philippe Quinault, which began at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, Patricia Howard noted, "For if in French theatre in the second half of the century, women's roles are preeminent, it was the précieux movement which made them so." One préciosité parlor game, the retelling of fairy tales as if spontaneously (though the tales were in fact carefully prepared), was to have great effects. Many of these fairy tales, in the préciosité style, were written, mostly notably by Madame d'Aulnoy. This fashion for fairy tales, and the writers themselves, were a notable influence later upon Charles Perrault, and Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the author of Beauty and the Beast. The stories tended to vary from the folk tradition, for example the characters were made to be of genteel origin. Whilst the heroes and heroines of fairy tales written by the précieuses often appeared as shepherds and shepherdesses, in pastoral settings, these figures were often secretly royal or noble. The précieuses are also remembered through the filter of Molière's one-act satire, Les Précieuses ridicules