Long framed by her critics as a pedantic précieuse, Scudéry (1607-1701) has only recently attracted the interest of professional philosophers. Critics have dismissed her lengthy novels as unreadable, her famous Saturday salon as amateurish, and her philosophical ideas as derivative and confused. In the recent feminist expansion of the canon of humanities, however, another Scudéry has appeared. In this reevaluation, the philosophical significance of her writings has emerged. Her literary corpus presents a novel version of the ancient philosophical method of dialogue; it also expresses original, sophisticated theories concerning the ethical, aesthetic, and theological disputes of early modernity. 

With the publication of Artamène or the Great Cyrus, a novel printed in ten volumes from 1648 until 1653, Mademoiselle de Scudéry acquired literary fame. One of the world’s longest novels, containing more than two million words, the work attracted a broad European reading public still avid for serial historical romances. Although it is set in ancient Assyria, the work was clearly a roman-à-clef which depicted various members of Rambouillet’s literary circle through pseudonyms. Scudéry herself appears under the title of Sappho. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/madeleine-scudery/.