Les Arts du spectacle dans la ville (1404-1721) by Marie-France Wagner , Claire Le Brun-Gouanvic (review)

Abstract

958 Reviews Les Arts du spectacle dans la ville (1404-1721). Ed. by Marie-France Wagner and Claire Le Brun-Gouanvic. Paris: Champion. 2001. 288 pp. 310 F. The ten studies in this collection of essays on large-scale public spectacle in early modern Europe describe the transformations of urban space from the Middle Ages to the Age of Enlightenment. They show how the emerging concepts of the public and of public space resulted in the development of new spaces occupied by new protagonists. The first four essays deal with the medieval representation of the court and the bourgeoisie in a number of discursive and spectacular works, which did not attempt to disturb the established order, but rather contributed towards its perpetuation. Claire Le Brun-Gouanvic opens with a study of two treatises by Christine de Pisan, for whom life was a spectacle, regulated by a specific behavioural and sartorial code, whose infringement by the rising merchant class was seen as a source ofsocial disorder. Religious and civic festivals conveyed the same message, whether one considers the tableaux that decorated the streets of northern European cities on the occasion of some royal or princely visit (Danielle Queruel), or the processions of Mere Folle in Dijon, which evolved from a good-humoured satire of the deviant mores of the community to a political criticism of the excesses ofthe regime (Juliette Valcke), or the ceremony of the Puy de la Conception in Rouen, which attempted to turn the sincere belief in the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, from which it originated, into an assertion of regional identity (Denis Hiie). The following group of essays focuses on the metamorphoses of the French royal entry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in particular on its transforma? tion into a political spectacle. The central procession is said to structure the public space, now dominated by the royal image (Marie-France Wagner). Hence the focal position of the equestrian statue of the king in a number of entries given in honour of Henri IV and Louis XIII in southern French towns. This explains why this ritual was copied and transplanted abroad by the French in their attempts to conquer and convert the New World to Christianity . . . and to the merits of royal absolutism (Hannah Fournier)! It also explains why it was pastiched in order to ridicule the established monarchical order when reality belied its spectacular representation, as under the last Valois kings (Guy Poirier). The last part of the collection starts with studies of the development of new public spaces in seventeenth-century Paris, such as the foire and the cours (Daniel Vaillancourt ), and of the aesthetic transformations of a political myth (the killing of the Hydra/Python by Hercules/Apollo), from an automaton repeatedly used for firework displays to a static allegorical painting celebrating the transcendent power of Louis XIV (Francoise Siguret). The section is completed by an analysis of the polit? ical exploitation by the authorities of an eighteenth-century criminal news item, and its ambiguous representation on the contemporary Parisian stage (Christian Biet and Patrice Peveri). Altogether this is a stimulating, if mixed, set of essays on town festivals and ceremonies , demonstrating the need for the festive tradition to adapt and change in response to changing circumstances, and in particular to the development of the city and the growth of urban civilization. GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON MARIE-CLAUDE CANOVA-GREEN ...