SOURCE: “The Unconfessed Précieuse: Mme. De Staël's Debt to Mlle. de Scudéry,” in The Impact of Art on French Literature, University of Delaware Press, 1985, pp. 33-55.

In the following essay, Borowitz establishes connections between Germaine de Staël's works—including Corinne and On Literature—to Scudéry's Artamène and Clélie. The critic also explains how Scudéry, both as an author and through her salons, provided a model for women writers and for women's education in France.

The peculiarly French delight in encounters between art and literature can be traced back to the seventeenth century when both visual and verbal portraiture flourished in précieux circles. The “literary portraits” were short, self-contained passages that served the dual purpose of providing detailed description of the appearance and personality of an individual character and inculcating a general lesson derived from understanding of the moral force...