Le Pays de Tendre
- Title:
- Le Pays de Tendre
- Alternate Title:
- Le Pays de Tendre
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Gascard, Achille (1875-1942)
- Other Creators:
- Scudery, Madeleine de
- Date:
- 1900
- Posted Date:
- 2015-08-25
- ID Number:
- 1029.01
- File Name:
- PJM_1029_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1800 - 1869
- Subject:
- Romance/Love/Marriage
Allegorical - Measurement:
- 22 x 31 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- The Carte de Tendre was "conceived as a social game during the Winter of 1653-1654" by Madelaine de Scudery, and a printed copy was "later incorporated into the first volume of her coded novel, Clelie." Reitinger 1999, 109. Reitinger calls it "undoubtedly the most successful example of an allegorical map ever printed" (Ibid.). The map is "a course in gallantry, giving men the woman's perspective on both the ways to win her heart . . . and the ways to lose it." DeJean 1991, 57; Peters 2004, 90-93. As part of the "social game," men seeking romantic (albeit apparently platonic) "Tenderness" undertook to make personal copies of the map. This is a manuscript version in pen and ink and color wash. It was done by French photographer Achille Gascard (1875-1942), perhaps to win the heart of his soon-to-be-wife. The date of 1900 is estimated.
Scudery was a member of "Les Precieuses," the Marquise de Rambouillet's famous coterie said by some to have conferred great "benefit" on France: "Careful attention to refinement in thought and speech, extended over a long period of time, among a large group of distinguished and influential persons, found its way into the literature and life of the nation." (Toy 1899, ix-x). But even for admirers of Les Precieuses, when Scudery convened her own salon, "l'esprit precieux went astray. False notions of elegance, delicacy and love prevailed. Contempt for simplicity and naturalness brought into the language affectation, into life prudishness, and into literature penantry." (Ibid. xi). "Scudery's tender geography has been enshrined in literary history as a mere bagatelle, the frivolous pastime of idle aristocrats." DeJean 78. In 1659, just five years after Scudery published the first volume of her 7,000 word Clelie, Moliere savaged her circle and in particular the Carte de Tendre in Les Precieuses Ridicules Peters 88; Toy xiii. The Carte de Tendre came to be seen "as a charter for the worst excesses of preciosite, for the mannered and rather cerebral courtship rituals satirized by Moliere." Monroe 1986, 9.
The tenor of modern literary criticism tends to a very different view: "much of the best recent scholarship on the 'Carte de Tendre' . . emphasizes the basic social subversiveness of Scudery's cartographic project" and "argue[s] persuasively that Scudery's map articulated a proto-feminist utopia," a world in which "No longer must [women] uncritically obey the men in their lives." (Peters 87, 111). The map has been called a "hard-hitting vindication of the rights of women," in particular "a woman's right to choose for herself and merit rather than family status as the measure of an individual's worth." (DeJean 87, 88; Delaney 2012, 209). "Mlle de Scudery’s realm of Tendre was really a kind of feminist utopia, and . . . [she] turned an innocent parlor game into a poignant metaphor for women’s aspirations to achieve social, political, and cultural prestige." (Orenstein, Gloria Feman, "Journey Through Mlle. De Scudery’s Carte de Tendre: A 17th Century Salon Woman's Dream/Country of Tenderness." Femspec 3.2, http://www.femspec.org/samples/salon.html, accessed November 22, 1914).
A great deal has been written about the Carte de Tendre. For English-language works with extensive bibliographies, see Peters 2004, Reitinger 1999, DeJean 1991, Monroe 1986.
For a 19th century satirical map based on the Carte de Tendre, see ID # 1072, The Carte de Tendre en 1869.
The collection includes a number of related maps; see Subject > Romance/Love/Marriage. Early allegorical maps of this kind were "more than oddities or simple curiosities," more than simply "reflections of contemporary views" they were "exemplary tools in the articulation of new attitudes, exposing controversial states of social awareness." Reitinger 1999, 106. See also Delaney 2012, 207-215.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Repository:
- Private Collection of PJ Mode
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.