He had made his debut, as has been said, with le Pere prudent in 1706.  This was followed a few years later by three mediocre novels.  The first of these, written in 1712, though not published” until 1737, appeared under the several titles of Pharsamon, les Folies romanesques, and le Don Quichotte moderne, and was, as one of the titles discloses, an attack upon the romantic novel, as exemplified in those of Mlle. de Scudery.  It must not be considered a parody, but rather a weak imitation of Cervantes’ Don Quijote.  He was no more successful in les Aventures de..., ou les Effets surprenants de la sympathie (1713-1714), written, in much the same style, or in la Voiture embourbee,[31] which appeared between the two publications of the former.  This latter follows a familiar device:  that is to say, one of the personages of the main narrative begins a story. which is continued by another when he reaches the end of his imagination, and so on.  The purpose of the story was to turn to ridicule romantic love, but, following the expression of Fournier, it advanced only “cahin-caha, comme le pauvre coche dont il contait les accidents, et il finit par s’embourber avec lui."[32] He somewhat redeemed himself in 1715 with le Triomphe de Bilboquet, ou la Defaite de l’Esprit, de l’Amour et de la Raison, a fancy inspired by the game of cup and ball, so much in vogue at that period that it threatened to usurp the time and rights of conversation, and had even made its way upon the stage, in which simple matter Marivaux found occasion for moral observation.

In 1717 he allied himself with le Nouveau Mercure, a paper devoted to the interests of the Modernes as against those of the Anciens.  This quarrel over the comparative merits of the ancient and modern writers, begun in the first half of the seventeenth century with the abbe de Bois-Robert, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, and later Perrault, Fontenelle, La Motte, and others ranged on the side of the latter, while Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Rollin, Mme. Dacier, and followers strenuously upheld the honor of antiquity, had dragged on through the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, until apparently the last word had been said by Mme. Dacier in her Preface a la traduction de l’Odyssee (1716).  Marivaux, however, by turn of mind and training a modern, and ever the champion of his friend La Motte, and, perhaps more to avenge him for the “grosses paroles de Mme. Dacier"[33] than to depreciate le divin Homere (whom he made a point of always mentioning in that way), would not let the matter rest, and, in 1717, composed a burlesque poem entitled l’Iliade ravestie.  Had he been familiar with the Greek language, he might never have committed this piece of literary impudence, but he knew Homer only through La Motte’s reduction of the Iliad, which in turn was based upon Mme. Dacier’s translation.  If his object was to overthrow the great Greek poet, it must have been a bitter disappointment to Marivaux to see that his burlesque passed almost unnoticed by his contemporaries and was soon forgotten.  The same year he wrote a Telemaque travesti, a parody on the masterpiece of Fenelon.  This work was not published until 1736, when it was received with such disapprobation that he hastened to disavow its authorship.[34]