Manuscript Animals

This section gathers some of the animal-related poems associated with Scudéry, known also as ‘Sapho’, and her circle which were circulated in manuscript form. The poems selected for translation here are those which connect most clearly with the published text on chameleons (either because they feature chameleons; or are mentioned in the Chameleons text; or are by the same authors). They are: three chameleon poems; three poems about Sapho’s hen-pigeon (two of which are attributed to ‘Acante’, a pseudonym for Scudéry’s friend, Paul Pellisson); and one of the many poems featuring Sapho’s fauvette or warbler. My selection also includes a longer ‘Story of Turtledoves’ which features further pigeon poems and stages an exchange between Scudéry and Madame de Platbuisson, author of one of the published chameleon poems. The majority of these manuscript poems date from the mid-1660s. Across all these poems, fidelity and friendship emerge as common themes. These poems are contained in two manuscripts: the chameleons, pigeons and turtledoves are in the MS ‘Conrart’ (BnF 5420.1 and 5420.2) and the warblers in the MS ‘Tallemant des Réaux’ (Bibliothèque de La Rochelle, MS Tallemant des Réaux 673, fol. 241; and reprinted in Le Manuscrit 673 de Tallemant des Réaux, ed. by Vincenette Maigne (Klincksieck, 1994), pp. 622–23). These poems give us a sense of the place of animals in the literary exchange and play of Scudéry and her circle.

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].