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Et si la modernisation des théoriciens politiques antiques par Madeleine de Scudéry n’était pas une maladroite tentative d’imitation ? Si l’autrice a eu accès aux sources philosophiques antiques par des médiations et par des traductions aussi bien savantes que populaires, théoriques que fictionnelles, écrites et orales, elle utilise surtout ces médiations pour mieux s’adapter à un lectorat en majorité féminin, jusqu’ici écarté de ces disciplines intellectuelles. En transmettant et en traduisant, Scudéry se distancie de sources devenues insatisfaisantes afin de développer une philosophie politique moderne.

Madeleine de Scudéry’s novels are usually considered as a clumsy attempt to imitate ancient political theories – but what if they were a way to modernise them? She obviously had access to the ancient philosophical sources via multiple translations and mediations erudite as well as popular, theoretical as well as fictional, written as well as oral. However, she used these mediations to adjust to a mostly female audience who remained excluded from those intellectual disciplines. By transmitting and translating, Scudéry adapts her sources, which had become unsatisfying, in order to develop a modern political philosophy.