Agnès Sorel Exhibition / Royal Lodge Section 4.3

Agnes in the eyes of historiographers, poets et writers

Following the historiographers of the reign of Charles VII, who were either favourable (Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, roi de France) or hostile to Agnès Sorel (Thomas Basin, Histoire des règnes de Charles VII et de Louis XI), the historiographers, poets and writers of the modern period (16th to 18th centuries) all contributed, each in their own way, to the shaping of the luminous image or the black legend of Agnès Sorel. She is alternately perceived as a gentle and virtuous adviser to the king, or, on a diametrically opposed level, as an unscrupulous intriguer who makes and breaks careers at court and misleads the sovereign.

By the end of the Ancien Régime, the myth of Agnès is ready to blossom, to spread and to reach its apotheosis in the following century.

Objects :

• Jean Chapelain, La Pucelle, or France delivered, heroic poem. Third edition, reviewed & retouched.-- In Paris: at Augustin Courbé, 1657. Bibliothèque municipale de Tours.
• Voltaire, The Maid of Orleans (La Pucelle d’Orléans). Mock epic poem in eighteen cantos. Voltaire: London: [s.n.], 1774 -- 263, [1 bl.] p. ; in-24. Bibliothèque municipale de Tours.
• -R. de Voyer d'Argenson et L.-E. de La Vergne de Tressan, Bibliothèque universelle des romans, 1778. (Res.13679/25), Bibliothèque municipale de Tours.
• Medallion / hair of Agnès Sorel, Inv NP545. [exhumation of 1777].
• Henri Lafosse, Agnès Sorel, - Paris : L. de Potter, 1844. - 3 vol. (358, 328, 411), Bibliothèque municipale de Tours.