Abstract
In his novel-memoirs, or epistolary-novel, a hybrid and original form featuring a single narrator, Suzanne Simonin, locked up against her will in a convent and forced to pronounce vows, Diderot embarks on religious satire and criticism, in particular on the occasion of the portraits of the mother superiors of the three convents where Suzanne is cloistered. This gallery of portraits forms an interesting triptych, as the pictorial and theatrical techniques mixed contribute to making these expected passages pieces of bravery colourful and perfectly oriented. The two side panels house, on the left, the portrait of the mother superior of the Sainte-Marie convent, on the right, that of the unpredictable and surprising, Madame ***. The larger central panel is occupied by the two mothers of Longchamp (Mother de Moni and Sister Sainte-Christine), who are opposites. Diderot builds these portraits on many converging phenomena of variations and reconfigurations (dialogued, full-length, in symmetry or antithesis) so as never to be boring, but above all to preserve the dramatic and dramatized perspective of SuzannSuzanne'snter with her executioners. These are, simultaneously, the effects of symmetry, the echoes, and the differential processes that the stylistic study seeks to characterize to testify to the art of the portrait under Denis Diderot’s pen.