A Modest Proposal: Reframing the Frontispieces of Madeleine de Scudéry’s Conversations (1680–1692)

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on the last of five frontispieces from Madeleine de Scudéry’s ten-volume set of works known collectively as the Conversations (1680–1692). At first glance, these frontispieces appear to simply flatter the royal patrons to whom the works are dedicated. However, closer attention reveals that the ‘horizon of expectations’ set by the last image prepares readers to enter in to a new kind of cultural space, largely defined by a (necessarily oblique) challenge to sovereign forms of literary production and consumption. I argue that the object of the final volumes of the Conversations is twofold: to persuade the royal reader of his desire for self-renewal, and to convince him that the singular space of that self-renewal lies within the pages of the book itself. Occurring at the intersection of the verbal and the visual, the final frontispiece figures Louis XIV as an integral part of the book. He is both royal dedicatee, and the ideal, exemplary interlocutor in the type of conversations the volumes propose.