The Fausse Prude affair, birth of a black legend about Madame de Maintenon

Madame de Maintenon has endured in literary history as the person who allegedly caused the expulsion of the Comédiens Italiens in 1697 because of a play, La Fausse Prude, where she supposedly recognized herself. The analysis of the first historical sources on this subject, the Lettres historiques et galantes by Madame Du Noyer, the correspondence of Madame Palatine, and the Mémoires of Saint-Simon, shows how a black legend was constructed, one for which we struggle to find the slightest historical foundation.