Clelia  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

The Map of Tendre (Carte du Tendre) is a French map of an imaginary country called Tendre produced by several hands (including Catherine de Rambouillet). It appeared as an engraving (attributed to François Chauveau) in the first part of Madeleine de Scudéry's 1654-61 novel Clélie. It shows a geography entirely based around the theme of love according to the Précieuses of that era: the river of Inclination flows past the villages of "Billet Doux" (Love Letter), "Petits Soins" (Little Trinkets) and so forth.

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Clélie, Histoire romaine (English: Clelia) is a novel published in ten volumes by Madeleine de Scudéry between 1654 and 1660. It is in Clelia that the famous Carte du Tendre appeared, a description of an Arcadia, where the river of Inclination waters the villages of Billet Doux, Petits Soins and so forth. It is a "galant" novel in which, in her own words:

"Elle exprime si délicatement les sentiments les plus difficiles à exprimer et elle sait si bien faire l'anatomie du coeur amoureux... Elle sait décrire toutes les jalousies, toutes les inquiétudes, toutes les impatiences, toutes les joies, tous les dégoûts, tous les murmures, tous les désespoirs, toutes les espérances, toutes les révoltes et tous ces sentiments tumultueux qui ne sont jamais bien connus que de ceux qui les sentent ou les ont sentis"

With classical or Oriental characters as nominal heroes and heroines, the whole language and action are taken from the fashionable ideas of the time, and the characters can be identified with Madeleine de Scudéry's contemporaries. In Clélie, Herminius represents Paul Pellisson; Scaurus and Lyriane were Paul Scarron and his wife (afterwards Mme de Maintenon); and in the description of Sapho in vol. 10 of Le Grand Cyrus the author paints herself.