![](https://assets.cambridge.org/97805214/12933/cover/9780521412933.jpg)
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 L'Astrée and androgyny
- 2 The grateful dead: Corneille's tragedy and the subject of history
- 3 Passion play: Jeanne des Anges, devils, hysteria and the incorporation of the classical subject
- 4 Rodogune: sons and lovers
- 5 Molière's Tartuffe and the scandal of insight
- 6 Racine's children
- 7 “Visions are seldom all they seem”: La Princesse de Clèves and the end of Classical illusions
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 L'Astrée and androgyny
- 2 The grateful dead: Corneille's tragedy and the subject of history
- 3 Passion play: Jeanne des Anges, devils, hysteria and the incorporation of the classical subject
- 4 Rodogune: sons and lovers
- 5 Molière's Tartuffe and the scandal of insight
- 6 Racine's children
- 7 “Visions are seldom all they seem”: La Princesse de Clèves and the end of Classical illusions
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
Summary
Narcissus
Enfin la gloire et la grandeur des Spectacles ne pouvoient mieux venir que de celuy qui s'estoit rendu luy-mesme le plus glorieux et le plus grand Spectacle du Monde.
(d'Aubignac, La Practique du Théâtre, p. 15)Although a final verdict may never be forthcoming on the political acumen with which Louis XIV directed the affairs of France during his long and often turbulent reign, few can doubt that he had a particular genius for making a spectacle of himself. Louis was, in his self-representation, the most “theoretical” of monarchs: his persona was both a theory and a theater of kingship. Having perceived that the essence of political power resided in the images and imaginary of majesty, he proceeded to project these images into the world in a way that had never been seen before. Whereas his reign is most often associated, in the works of literary historians, with a turning away from the excesses of the Baroque, certainly his insistence on living his persona as a royal “role” squarely situates him at the pinnacle of an entire Weltanschauung, where, if all the world was a stage, Louis knew that his was the leading part. In this he seems to have understood the enormous power inherent in the manipulation of representations, to have grasped what every great political actor has perceived: his force comes from his ability to orchestrate reality around spectacular scenarios.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and ProseThe Family Romance of French Classicism, pp. 1 - 23Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992