ABSTRACT
Madeleine de Scudéry inserted the ‘Carte de Tendre’, an allegorical map for courtship, in her novel Clélie (1654). As it was often removed for discussion and display, many surviving copies of the original novel no longer have this map, although some are complete. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the ‘Carte de Tendre’ was adapted and translated in various ways. A translation into English was provided in Clelia, An Excellent New Romance (1655), but the map was also transmitted from France to England in less direct ways, often undergoing substantial re-interpretation. Early on, alternative maps derived from its template were created by contemporaries of Scudéry – maps with more libertine philosophies that mocked the values of the précieuses. These were subsequently reconfigured as an epistolary narrative by Paul Tallemant in his Voyage de l’Isle d’amour (1663), the text Aphra Behn turned into A Voyage to the Isle of Love (1684). This chapter traces the cultural transmission and translation of Scudéry’s map in its many facets. In doing so, it examines interpretations of Scudéry’s Neoplatonic philosophy on courtship, throws new light on power and communication in personal relationships, and offers an analysis of Behn’s translation methods and decisions.
