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In Marie de Sévigné's letters, some kinds of chronicles tell long and painful illnesses in a paradoxical comic tone. Their first aim is reassuring correspondents. But laughing together has moreover a comforting and perhaps curative function for the patient. On the one hand, by practising self-mockery, the letter-writer regains control of the self-image damaged by illness; on the other hand, she neutralises the pain and anxiety by creating a kind of comic theatre where the doctors, the entourage and the symptoms become comic characters; finally, she seeks the help of the epistolary community by sharing the laughter. Thus laughter is a process of distancing that allows the writer to refuse to be reduced to her body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]