Engraving of Madeleine de Scudéry
Madeleine de Scudéry (November 15, 1607 - June 2, 1701), often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer. She was the younger sister of author Georges de Scudéry, but is generally regarded as his superior in skill.
Biography
Born at Le Havre, Normandy, in northern France, she is said to have been very plain as well as without fortune, but she was very well educated. Establishing herself at Paris with her brother, she was at once admitted to the Rambouillet coterie, and afterwards established a salon of her own under the title of the Société du samedi (Saturday Society). For the last half of the 17th century, under the pseudonym of Sapho or her own name, whe was acknowledged as the first bluestocking of France and of the world. She formed a close friendship with Paul Pellisson which was only ended by his death in 1693.
Works
Her lengthy novels, such as Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (10 vols., 1648-53), Clélie (10 vols., 1654-61), Ibrahim, ou l'illustre Bassa (4 vols., 1641), Almahide, ou l'esclave reine (8 vols., 1661-3) were the delight of Europe, commended by other literary figures such as Madame de Sévigné. Artamène, which contains about 2.1 million words, ranks as one of the longest novels ever written. These stories derive their length from endless conversations and, as far as incidents go, successive abductions of the heroines, conceived and told decorously.
Scudéry's novels are usually set in the classical world or the Orient, but their language and action reflect fashionable ideas of the 17th century, and the characters can be identified with Mademoiselle de Scudéry's contemporaries. In Clélie, Herminius represents Paul Pellisson; Scaurus and Lyriane were Paul Scarron and his wife (who became Mme de Maintenon); and in the description of Sapho in vol. 10 of Le Grand Cyrus the author paints herself.
In Clélie, Scudéry invented the famous Carte du Tendre, a map of an Arcadia where the geography is all based around the theme of love: the river of Inclination flows past the villages of "Billet Doux" (Love Letter), "Petits Soins" (Little Trinkets) and so forth.
Scudéry was a skilled conversationalist, and had a distinct vocation as a pedagogue. She could moralize--a favourite employment of the time--with sense and propriety.
Controversial in her own era, de Scudéry was satirized by Molière in his plays Les Précieuses ridicules (1659) and Les Femmes savantes (1672).
Later Years
Madeleine survived her brother by more than thirty years, and in her later days published numerous volumes of conversations, to a great extent extracted from her novels, thus forming a kind of anthology of her work. She outlived her vogue to some extent, but retained a circle of friends to whom she was always the "incomparable Sapho."
Her Life and Correspondence was published at Paris by MM. Rathery and Boutron in 1873.
Literature
- C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, volume iv (Paris, 1857-62)
- Rathery and Boutron, Mademoiselle de Scudéry: Sa vie et sa correspondence (Paris, 1873)
- Victor Cousin, La société française au 17me siècle (sixth edition, two volumes, Paris, 1886)
- André Le Breton, Le roman au XVIIème siècle (Paris, 1890)
- A. G. Mason, The Women of the French Salons (New York, 1891)
Summaries of the stories and keys to the characters may be found in Heinrich Körting, Geschichte des französischen Romans im 17ten Jahrhundert (second edition, Oppeln, 1891).[1]
References
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