The King in Trinkets: Madeleine de Scudéry's Conversations and the Downsizing of Absolutism

Abstract

This article studies the discourse and material culture of absolutism in two conversations from Madeleine de Scudéry's Conversations nouvelles sur divers sujets (1684). Read together and against each other, ‘De la magnificence et de la magnanimité’ and ‘De l'ennui sans sujet’ present the transition from an economy of representation and display that elicits awe and admiration to an exchange of goods that promises personal satisfactions and pleasures. I argue that Scudéry effects a literary and material ‘downsizing’ of absolutism in her description of a court entertainment at Marly that combined gambling with the pleasures of consumption.