Helena Taylor, project PI, gave an invited paper, ‘Atoms and Animals in Madeleine de Scudéry’s Conversations (1680-92)’, at the University of Bristol’s French Research Seminar, October 2nd, 1pm. Continue reading for details.
University of Bristol, Department of French research seminar
Our programme for 2024-25 launches with Professor Helena Taylor (Exeter) presenting her paper, ‘Atoms and Animals in Madeleine de Scudéry’s Conversations (1680–92)’ (introducer: Paul Earlie; respondent: Rowan Tomlinson).
Synopsis:
Looking across the five volumes of dialogues, Conversations, published towards the end of the career of the influential seventeenth-century intellectual, Madeleine de Scudéry, this paper will examine the place of ‘science’ in this sociable, salon-orientated writing. In particular, I will look at the intersections of natural philosophy, natural history, and poetics in her engagement with atomism and her writing on butterflies and chameleons (via Democritus, lodestones, and quinine). Arguing that she asks her reader to link this seemingly different material, I suggest both a method for reading her Conversations and demonstrate the contributions to scientific thought of a figure principally known for her pioneering literary fiction.