Scudéry's portraits: patriarchy, agency, and genre

In the ongoing project of recovering and (re)integrating early modern European women philosophers, scholars have been re-examining not only who counts as a philosopher, but what kinds of works are properly understood as philosophical. Madeleine de Scud & eacute;ry is best remembered as a novelist, but some scholars have argued that her dialogues are richly philosophical. Here, I examine an early and overlooked text from Scud & eacute;ry - Illustrious Women - which is a collection of speeches of historical women who find themselves in dire circumstances. I argue that Illustrious Women offers a sophisticated critique of patriarchal power: Scud & eacute;ry exposes the conflict between epistemic and practical agency under conditions of gendered oppression and illustrates specific manifestations of this harm concerning control, autonomy, and consent. In so doing, particularly through the genre of oratory, Scud & eacute;ry's Illustrious Women is both a work of seventeenth-century feminist resistance and a subversive educational tool.