Search results for ""Author Madeleine De Scudery""

Ridiculed for her Saturday salon, her long romance novels, and her protofeminist ideas, Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) has not been treated kindly by the literary establishment. Yet her multivolume novels were popular best-sellers in her time, translated almost immediately into English, German, Italian, Spanish and even Arabic. "The Story of Sapho" makes available for the first time in modern English a self-contained section from Scudery's novel "Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus", best known today as the favoured reading material of the would-be "salonnieres" that Moliere satirized in "Les precieuses ridicules". The "Story" tells of Sapho, a woman writer modeled on the Greek Sappho, who deems marriage slavery. Interspersed in the love story of Sapho and Phaon are a series of conversations, like those that took place in Scudery's own salon, in which Sapho and her circle discuss the nature of love, the education of women, writing and right conduct. This edition also includes a translation of an oration, or "harangue" of Scudery's in which Sapho extols the talents and abilities of women in order to persuade them to write.

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A collection of texts by a pioneering seventeenth-century French woman author. Comprising texts by Madeleine de Scudéry, including many from her novel Clélie, this volume focuses on the story of Lucretia, the Roman matron whose rape and suicide led to the downfall of the Roman monarchy. Through her work, Scudéry seeks to contrast the enormous cultural contributions of women with their physical vulnerability and to propose an alternative to sexual violation, as envisioned on the Map of the Land of Tender that charts an imaginary land in the novel and outlines a path toward love. In Scudéry’s version of this tale, Lucrece and her beloved, Brutus, follow the path of tender friendship. Scudéry contradicts history’s characterization of Lucrece as craving glory in the form of fame. Indeed, contrary to ancient sources, Lucrece’s glory will be her decision to sacrifice herself secretly for her tender friend.

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Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) was the most popular novelist in her time, read in French in volume installments all over Europe and translated into English, German, Italian, and even Arabic. But she was also a charismatic figure in French salon culture, a woman who supported herself through her writing and defended women's education. She was the first woman to be honored by the French Academy, and she earned a pension from Louis XIV for her writing. Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues is a careful selection of Scudery's shorter writings, emphasizing her abilities as a rhetorical theorist, orator, essayist, and letter writer. It provides the first English translations of some of Scudery's Amorous Letters, only recently identified as her work, as well as selections from her Famous Women, or Heroic Speeches, and her series of Conversations. The book will be of great interest to scholars of the history of rhetoric, French literature, and women's studies.

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