Louis XIV and the Direction of Ideas in France

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is twofold: to discuss aspects of French cultural life in which the crown displayed a direct interest, and to assess how far members of the French intelligentsia were beginning to question principles and practices of the regime by the turn of the century. The cultural history of France under Louis XIV should be contextualised in time and in space,1 for it encompasses scientists, writers, artists and others whose combined lives span almost the entire period of Bourbon monarchy down to the Revolution. For example, when the French Academie des Sciences was founded in 1666 it included among its members Marin Cureau de la Chambre who was born in 1596 when the Wars of Religion still had not run their course, while towards the end of Louis’s reign was born Denis Diderot (1713) who was to be one of the most prominent figures in the French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and died just five years before the Revolution. French cultural history under Louis XIV owed much to scholars from other parts of Europe. France opened itself to cultural influences from outside, welcoming from abroad famous names in the sciences, philosophy, the visual, literary and musical arts; likewise French scholars travelled to other parts of Europe or corresponded with colleagues elsewhere.