ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Van Schurman's views of her correspondents Marie de Gournay and Anne de Rohan in her quest for mentoring relationships and ways to depict female authorship in relation to the public sphere. An intellectual covenant was a well-established literary phenomenon in sixteenth-century France, and it was couched in terms of a familial partnership. A few biological literary mothers in early modern France, Italy, and England mentored their daughters, nieces, and granddaughters. In France, Marguerite de Navarre found a role model in her mother, Louise de Savoie; Antoinette de Loynes, the wife of the courtier and humanist pedagogue Jean de Morel, mentored her three daughters, Camille, Lucrece, and Diane de Morel; Queen Jeanne d'Albret mentored her daughter, Catherine de Bourbon; Louise de Coligny educated and closely followed the lives of her six stepdaughters by means of a vast correspondence.
