L’Astrée d’Honoré d’Urfé : fortune et vicissitudes d’un best-seller au xvii^e siècle

Astrée’s success is reflected in the commercial issue it quickly became for booksellers. It is also reflected in its influence on society in the classical age: a “bréviaire des courtisans,” it embodies a social ethos. It inspired social games, the fashion for “portraits déguisés,” and numerous adaptations. But it gradually became a cultural and social reference that was only known through summaries, until the scientific editions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.