La réception d'Agrippa d'Aubigné au XVIIe siècle

Abstract

Already seriously weakened at the send of the sixteenth century, Agrippa d'Aubigné's reputation meets, in the classical era, with a wave of hostility as a result of the heretical, sectarian, and biased nature of the writer and his work. The efforts of Madame de Maintenon, d'Aubigné's grand-daughter, temporarily rehabilitate the image of her ancestor by emphasizing the soldier's services to the Crown and by spreading the imagined thesis of his aristocratic origins. The true rise of the poet's reputation, however, will come only through foreign Protestant states which set up d'Aubigné as a lasting example of devotion to the Cause.