"Une petite lunette d'approche enchantee": regards scuderiens sur le Grand Divertissement de Versailles

A study of Mademoiselle de Scudéry's account of the 1668 Versailles festival.

This paper aims to consider the appropriation by Mlle de Scudéry of the coded genre of the royal festival book in order to assert her independence as a writer. Unlike conventional accounts, the description of the Versailles garden festival of 18 July 1668 inserted in her novel La Promenade de Versailles is less intent on communicating information available elsewhere than on entertaining and making the reader experience a pleasure derived from the very texture of the narrative. It is as if the expected praise of the monarch served to veil the author’s desire to maintain a degree of autonomy by resisting generic constraints with a view to controlling her narrative.