Economies and ecologies of nature in L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé

Nature in L’Astrée has been read as an allegory by many scholars who underscored its political, social, linguistic or meta-literary dimensions. The article argues that nature is also a character per se, and undeniably the most ambivalent one. As the matrix of this particularly ironic novel, nature creates unclear and unstable exchanges and discourses, as much as it is constituted through them.