Copyright

Helena Taylor;

Published On

2026-01-30

Page Range

pp. 3–64

Language

  • English

Print Length

62 pages

Introduction

Atoms and Animals in Madeleine de Scudéry’s Conversations and Other Works

Chapter of: Science in the Salon: Atoms and Animals in Madeleine de Scudéry’s 'Conversations' (1680–92): An Essay and Translation(pp. 3–64)
The Introduction opens with a contextual discussion of Scudéry’s life and works, before giving a brief overview of science and philosophy in Scudéry’s Paris and an introduction to her Conversations. It then examines each of the translated texts in turn: ‘On Uncertainty’; ‘The Story of Two Chameleons’; Manuscripts; ‘The Story of Prince Ariamène’, which includes a fictional Democritus, and ‘On Butterflies’. Stressing the interconnection between these works, the Introduction demonstrates the centrality of dialectic to Scudéry’s discussions of natural philosophy. These texts engage with questions of atomism; of uncertainty, faith and divine providence; of observation and its limits; of animals and the Cartesian animal machine; of fidelity and friendship. They do so using a variety of genres, from historical fiction to poetic madrigals, from natural historical observations to playful verse exchanged in manuscript. The Introduction explains how Scudéry places exchange, dialogue and friendship at the heart of her approach to enquiry, as she explores philosophy as a social and pleasurable practice, and promotes a form of ‘epistemic mobility’ that embraces plural ways of knowing.

Contributors

Helena Taylor

(author)
Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at University of Exeter
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5683-7967

Helena Taylor is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on the intellectual and literary history of early modern France, particularly the seventeenth century: she is interested in cultures of learning, women's varied intellectual practices and their reception, classical reception, cultural quarrels, and translation studies. Her first book, The Lives of Ovid in Seventeenth-Century Culture (OUP, 2017) examines the reception of the life of the ancient Roman poet Ovid in 17th-century French culture. Her second book, Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France (OUP, 2024), was written thanks to a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, and was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Book Prize. She is the co-editor of Ovid in French: Reception by Women from the Renaissance to the Present (OUP, 2023); and Women and Querelles in Early Modern France (a special issue of Romanic Review, 2021). Helena is currently leading a five-year project, Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, originally awarded as a European Research Council Horizon Europe Starting Grant in the 2022 round (€1.5 million) and now funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].