Conclusions

While La Croix du Maine and Sainte-Marthe were responding in part to representations of family—as underpinning literature and learning—that they found in some of the works they surveyed, on the other hand the pair were also extending the family function further still. The vast fields of high-cultural endeavour scoped by La Croix du Maine and Sainte-Marthe did not simply pre-exist their surveys but were further shaped by them. Both surveys were highly selective in social, gender, regional, and other terms. Sainte-Marthe’s Elogia perhaps communicate more profoundly than any other work in the period the triangular imbrication of (i) family, (ii) social hierarchy, and (iii) literature and learning.