Маделен де Скюдери: Француз жазушысы және оның мұрасы

French writer (1607–1701)

Madeleine de Scudéry (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer. Her works also demonstrate such comprehensive knowledge of ancient history that it is suspected she had received instruction in Greek and Latin. Madeleine and her brother Georges de Scudéry were placed in the care of an uncle who cared for them very well. These figures were often disguised as Persian, Greek, and Roman warriors and maidens. Les Femmes Illustres (1642) addresses itself to women and defends education, rather than the beauty or cosmetic, as a means of social mobility for women. Scudéry was a skilled conversationalist; several volumes purporting to report her conversations upon various topics were published during her lifetime. She had a distinct vocation as a pedagogue.

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. Scudéry was deaf for the last 40 years of her life. She outlived her vogue to some extent, but retained a circle of friends, like Marie Dupré, to whom she was always the "incomparable Sapho." Her Life and Correspondence was published at Paris by MM. Rathery and Boutron in 1873.

Madeleine de Scudéry was part of a movement in the late Renaissance in England and France where women used classical rhetorical theory for their own. The novel is set in and around the literary circles of the 17th Century Précieuses. The protagonist, a young woman named Madeleine Troqueville, becomes enamored of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who snubs young Madeleine. It has been suggested that the novel is a roman à clef with Natalie Clifford Barney portrayed as Mademoiselle de Scudéry.