Le Commerce Du Parnasse

This critical edition of Françoise Pascal’s epistolary collection Le Commerce du Parnasse (Paris, 1669) highlights a rare, innovative and entertaining work by a woman writer virtually unknown today, but in her time a distinguished playwright, poet and painter.

Composed of thirty-seven letters in prose and verse, Le Commerce du Parnasse is part gallant correspondence, part poetry collection, part epistolary novel. Now in its first modern edition, this fascinating text provides new insights into seventeenth-century salon life and the discourses of galanterie and préciosité.

This is a volume in the series Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, intorudction and essential notes are all in French.

Frontispice, II; Remerciements, IV; Introduction, V; Description du Commerce du Parnasse, IX; Signification de l'oeuvre, XV; Le Texte, XIX; Bibliographie, XXI; LE COMMERCE DU PARNASSE; Appendice, 44.

Deborah Steinberger is Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Delaware.