SOURCE: Cholakian, Patricia Francis. “The Economics of Friendship: Gournay's Apologie pour celle qui escrit.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 25, no. 3 (fall 1995): 407-17.

In the following essay, Cholakian contrasts de Gournay's practical view of friendship, tempered by the necessities and stresses of everyday life, with the more idealized perspectives in Montaigne's “De l'amitié” and Cicero's “De amicitia.”

The title of Gournay's Apologie pour celle qui escrit would seem to indicate that it is a first-person narrative intended to justify the writer's life to her readers.¹ This impression is confirmed early in the text, when she begs an unnamed prelate to use the true facts in it to defend her reputation after her death.² She does not proceed with her revelations in an orderly, chronological fashion, however. Instead of telling her story in the form of mémoires, she speaks about only the financial aspects of her life, and...