SOURCE: “Literary and Political Collaboration: The Prefatory Letter of Madeleine de Scudéry's Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus,” in Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, Vol. XXIII, No. 45, 1996, pp. 491-500.

In the following essay, Hinds asserts that the “ambiguous authorial figure” adumbrated in Scudéry's dedicatory letter to the Duchess de Longueville preceding Artamène models an alternative to absolutist political leadership.

The prefatory letter of Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (1649-1653) treats the politically charged figure of the Duchesse de Longueville by means of literary investment performed by an ambiguous authorial figure. In their passage between multiple positions of subjectivity, between “je,” “nous,” and “on,” the figures of authorship manage to construct a portrait of the frondeuse that celebrates her personal, moral worth and correspondingly promotes her eligibility to reign. This reading is guided by a series of questions. What rhetorical strategies does the epistolary...