Late Seventeenth-century France Research Articles

Performative Polemic: Anti-Absolutist Pamphlets and Their Readers in Late Seventeenth-Century France. By Kathrina Ann LaPorta

This book makes a welcome contribution to the burgeoning study of early modern pamphlet literature and seventeenth-century news and media culture. Combining book history and rhetorical analysis, Kathrina Ann LaPorta reconstructs ‘a literary history’ of the ‘French-language pamphlets that denounced Louis XIV’s absolute monarchy between 1667 and 1715’ (p. 6). Each of the five chapters performs a close reading of a single pamphlet. Together, they demonstrate not only the evolution of anti-absolutist polemic over this period but also the formal diversity of this mode of writing and its multiple approaches to imagining and addressing the audience for such critical discourse. Habsburg diplomat François-Paul de Lisola’s Bouclier d’état et de justice (1667) wields the language of law to refute the French monarch’s dubious legitimation of war, figuring its reader as arbiter and judge of affairs of state. Le Miroir des princes (1667) and Soupirs de la France esclave (1689–90) make use of ‘emotional modes of persuasion’ (p. 69) to portray the Sun King’s expansionist wars as a tragedy of historic proportions and his overreach as a threat to the institution of monarchy itself. Other pamphlets employ satire and burlesque to undermine the king and his government, as in the case of the dialogue of the dead between Innocent XI and Mazarin in L’Alcoran de Louis XIV (1695) and the comic fictional unveiling of the king’s marital life in Le Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696). Through these attentive close readings, LaPorta makes three central arguments about the pamphlets of this period. First and most successfully, she illustrates that, before ‘literature’ existed as an independent category, pamphlet-writing exhibited a high level of craft and creativity, often drawing on the resources of theatre and narrative as well as polemic. Second, LaPorta persuasively challenges the traditional characterization of pamphlets as ‘ephemera’ by showing how their writers positioned them in relation to longer histories of dissent. This could entail intertextual references to older pamphlets, such as the echoing of Fronde-era mazarinades found in L’Alcoran de Louis XIV. Other examples, such as Le Miroir des princes, invite their readers to look back on contemporary events from the vantage point of an imagined posterity. Observing that pamphlets offered up ‘citable’ criticisms which could (in modern parlance) ‘go viral’ or have a legacy in future times (p. 20), LaPorta finally suggests that we read pamphlets as ‘performative’ texts, rhetorically effective counterweights to the official representations of monarchical splendour that elsewhere performatively reinforced kingly power. This key insight about the historical perspective represented in pamphlet-writing could be explored further in a future project examining a chronologically broader corpus, attending more thoroughly to the significant links between mazarinades, these late-seventeenth-century works, and even eighteenth-century anti-monarchist polemic. In the meantime, LaPorta’s first book extends an enticing invitation to read early modern pamphlets with a keener eye.

Breeched and Unbridled: Bifurcated Equestrian Garments for Women in Early Modern Europe

This article discusses the wearing of bifurcated equestrian garments for women in early modern Europe. Considering visual representations as well as documentary sources, the first section examines the fashion for red riding breeches between the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Worn for their comfort and functionality in the saddle, these garments were also invested with powerful symbolic and affective meaning. The second section provides new insights about female equestrian outfits in late seventeenth-century France. Through the close reading of two written accounts, the author sheds light on the use of breeches as undergarments in the saddle and discusses the appearance of a hybrid riding uniform that incorporated knee-length culottes. By presenting horsewomen who wore bifurcated garments in the pursuit of leisure rather than transgression, this study revises historical narratives that cast the breeched woman exclusively as a symbol of gender upheaval.

Political Resonances in the Motets for Saint Louis Under Louis XIV

This article examines several motets composed to celebrate Saint Louis (Louis IX) in late seventeenth-century France. As praise of Saint Louis overlapped with that of Louis XIV, these pieces offer insights into the interplay between the French baroque sacred repertoire and royal encomium. In their texts and music, the motets reflect shifts linked not just to the ceremonial contexts for which they were written but also to wider political developments. In particular, the move from ahistorical presentations of a triumphant Louis IX in the 1660s and 1670s to a portrayal of the crusader king’s fortitude in captivity and defeat later in the reign reflected the changing context of Louis XIV’s wars. By presenting a new view on the political resonances of these works, the article shows the value of sacred music as a source for historians of royal representation under the Sun King.

Les héritières de Psyché au XVIIe siècle: Parallèle de La Fontaine et de La Force

Late seventeenth-century France was fascinated by the myth of Psyche. The Greek princess inspired not only Jean de La Fontaine, who rewrote Apuleius’ original fable (1669); more indirectly, Psyche’s misfortune and happily ever after were a fertile base in the genre of the fairy tale. Whereas the influence of the myth of Psyche has been discussed for the famous fairy tales by Charles Perrault and the 'contes de fees litteraires' by Madame d’Aulnoy, this essay investigates its relation with 'Plus Belle que Fee' (1697) by the less known Mademoiselle de La Force. A comparison between the ancient myth, rewritten by La Fontaine, and the modern – and even subversive – fairy tale sheds light on the literary and socio-political tensions of the late seventeenth century, for La Force participates in the 'querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' and in the 'querelle des femmes'.

Attacking the Monarchy’s Sacrality in Late Seventeenth-Century France: The Underground Literature against Louis XIV, Jansenism and the Dauphin’s Court Faction

Attacking the Monarchy’s Sacrality in Late Seventeenth-Century France: The Underground Literature against Louis XIV, Jansenism and the Dauphin’s Court Faction

Testing the Spirit of the Prophets: Jean Chéron, Melancholy and the “Illusions” of Dévotes

This article contends that the vulnerability of mystics to accusations of “melancholy” was harnessed in late seventeenth-century France as part of an anti-mystical movement. Several historians have noted how the suspicion of mystics gained momentum in France during this period. Reports of anti-mystic scandals from elsewhere in Europe such as the Alumbrados in Seville (1623) were translated into French and widely publicized. There were also a number of domestic incidents including the persecution of the Illumines of Picardy in 1635, the possession at Loudun in 1635, and the infamous Quietist affair of the 1690s. This paper will present a case study from the middle decade of the century, focusing on the Carmelite Jean Cheron’s (1596-1673) critique of the “false spirituality” of female mystics. It will situate Cheron’s published treatise the Examen de la theologie mystique (1657) in the wider context of the anti-mystical spiritual currents of the century, as well as locating it within a longer tradition of using melancholy to discredit spiritual experiences. In the course of this discussion, this article argues that Cheron’s text can provide a window onto the anxieties about spiritual directors who were failing in their duties to subject mystical experiences to the criteria which “discernment” literature had set out for them. In doing so, it finds support for the recent approaches of historians who have sought to destabilize the notion that the anti-mystical movement of the seventeenth century constituted an attack on female spirituality.

‘Upon the Quakers and the Quietists’: Quietism, Power and Authority in Late Seventeenth-Century France, and its Relation to Quaker History and Theology

This article poses a number of questions around its subject matter, from which I develop some explanatory frameworks and further conceptualizations of Quietism. It addresses, primarily, the questions: What is Quietism? What were the issues of power and authority leading to the infamous Quietist Controversy in late seventeenth-century France? And subsequently, what is the nature of Quietism’s connection to the Quaker theological tradition?

Historische representatie en de betekenis van het verleden

Historical narratives consist of three different kinds of information: information about past events (the inventory of the past), information about other historical narratives (the historiographical thesis), and information about the meaning of the past (the historical thesis). These different aspects of historical knowledge together constitute a coherent view on a certain period in time. This article examines these forms of information and their interaction by examining Georgia J. Cowart’s book The Triumph of Pleasure. Louis XIV & the Politics of Spectacle (2008) as a case study. Her work shows how artists undermining the Sun King’s propaganda of absolute kingship were expressing an ideology of social equality and harmony, anticipating eighteenth century Enlightenment. These criticisms of absolutism are part of the inventory of the past. The view that those criticisms should be highlighted when interpreting late seventeenth-century France is the historiographical thesis of the work. What makes the criticisms of absolutism meaningful is that they function as examples of the new ideology of social equality and harmony. Historical narratives exemplify the past in order to express a thesis about the past.

The triumph of pleasure: Louis XIV & the politics of spectacle

Prominent components of Louis XIV's propaganda, the arts of spectacle also became sources of a potent resistance to the monarchy in late seventeenth-century France. With a particular focus on the court ballet, comedy-ballet, opera, and opera-ballet, Georgia J. Cowart tells the long-neglected story of how the festive arts deployed an intricate network of subversive satire to undermine the rhetoric of sovereign authority.With bold revisionist strokes, Cowart traces this strain of artistic dissent through the comedy-ballets of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Moliere, the late operatic works of Lully and the operas of his sons, the opera-ballets of Andre Campra and his contemporaries, and the related imagery of Antoine Watteau's well-known painting The Pilgrimage to Cythera. She contends that through a variety of means, including the parody of old-fashioned court entertainments, these works reclaimed traditional allegories for new ideological aims, setting the tone for the Enlightenment. Looking at all these festive arts from the perspective of the ballet as it emerged from the court into the Parisian public sphere, Cowart ultimately situates this genre as the missing link between an imagery of propaganda and an imagery of political protest.

“A Kind of Eloquence Even in Music”: Embracing Different Rhetorics in Late Seventeenth-Century France

Abstract French rhetoricians of the seventeenth century—among them François Fénelon, Bernard Lamy, René Bary, and René Rapin—brought about a profound shift in the landscape of their discipline. Their texts call into question the centrality of rhetorical figures (part of the elocutio), the dispositio, and other artful rhetorical precepts, while placing increased emphasis on delivery (pronuntiatio). In most cases, they realized this new emphasis via one of two novel approaches: the first relied upon a Cartesian taxonomy of the passions, whereas the second sought to abandon precepts altogether in the quest for transparent, or “Natural,” representation. Even while adopting contrasting methods, representatives of both approaches were unanimous in regarding rhetoric and music as sister disciplines. Furthermore, French musicians and rhetoricians alike rejected the prevailing idea that the relationship between these disciplines was hierarchical, with rhetoric the dominant sibling. This shift helps to explain why the notion that music “imitates” the structures and conventions of rhetoric, while popular in other regions, is to be found in no French source after ca. 1640. Yet, many recent studies continue to perpetuate such hierarchies, mapping onto musical works rhetorical concepts unknown or consciously avoided in France. Relating a nuanced depiction of multiple French rhetorical practices to music-centered writings by Bacilly, La Croix, Lecerf, Grimarest, and others reveals that the very same aesthetic positions evident among rhetoric texts also shaped the era's discourse on music. More broadly, because no tradition existed in French musical discourse of articulating aesthetic matters until Lecerf's Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique française (1704–1706), the intersection of music and rhetoric offers a rare means of constructing an aesthetics of musical eloquence in seventeenth-century France.

The Complete Works of Voltaire/Œuvres complètes de Voltaire ed. by Nicholas Cronk, et al (review)

852 Reviews to compress a combination of the study ofMontaigne's ethics with a study of his scepticism in a slim volume isoften brilliant, and always stimulating. UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER PHILIP HENDRICK Zayde: A Spanish Romance. By MARIE-MADELEINE PIOCHE DE LAVERGNE, COMTESSE DE LAFAYETTE. Ed. and trans. by NICHOLAS D. PAIGE. (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2oo6. 248 pp. $I8. ISBN 978-o-226-46852-5. Although The Princess of Cleves has long been a part of the literary curriculum, for readers of English as well as of its original French, the longest work attributed to Marie-Madeleine de La Vergne, Comtesse de Lafayette, has largely been neglected. Yet Zayde: A Spanish Romance, published in I670 under the name of Lafayette's friend JeanReginauld de Segrais, is a delightful work. It gives insight into themove ment known as Preciosite, with itsproto-feminist critique of love and marriage, ithas a plot full of twists and surprises, and-unlike Cleves-it has a happy ending. The year 2006 marks the returnofZayde: ithas reappeared in a French paperback edition and now in this fine translation byNicholas Paige in the important series ofworks by women authors, The Other Voice inEarly Modern Europe. To translate Lafayette is no mean feat, as we know from themany attempts to render her better-known novel. It ishard to strike a balance between preserving the slightly formal elegance of the French and going to the opposite extreme in trying to convey thewitty playfulness of some of the dialogues. It is tempting to try to compensate fortheabstraction thatwas natural towriters of late seventeenth-century France by rendering thingsmore concretely, tryingto imply details of description the author avoided. At a fewpoints Paige seems tome to err on the side of impersonality, but generally I thinkhe gets itquite right. It isgood to see that theheroine, and thus also thenovel, has her name back, Zayde, theoriginal French spelling. In translating the restof the titleas 'ASpanish Romance' Paige serves us well, for-as the translator explains in his impressive and highly in formative introduction-'Zayde is the last great French romance' (p. 13), and the question of the subtitle opens the translator's insightfulnote on this generic hybrid. Paige calls attention to the sharp differences in structure that separate the i670 work from the small book that eight years later heralded something new, something that many have called the firstgreat novel of analysis. With its thorough introduction, clear and informative footnotes, and extensive bibliography, Paige's Zayde will bring a freshview of Lafayette's work to an English public. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA JOHN D. LYONS La Bruyere: de l'enferau paradis. Un guide des 'Caracteres'. By FLAVIO LUONI. Saint Genouph: Nizet. 2004. 253 pp. ?25. ISBN 978-2-7078-1275-9. The slightlymystifying subtitle to Flavio Luoni's book on La Bruyere turns out to be an exact description ofwhat it is-a guide. Luoni, who, we are told on the back cover, 'aime [. .] a se consoler avec lesmoralistes', sets out toprovide an account of how La Bruyere affords 'une doctrine complete de l'homme, de Dieu et de ladestin6e terrestre'.He does so by organizing the disparate elements of theCaracteres into an MLR, I02.3, 2007 853 artificiallycoherent totality (his term is 'reconstitution'), inorder toenable his readers to pick their thematicway more deftly through the loosely arranged entries inwhat Barthes memorably called 'le scraps-book [sic] de lamondanite' ('La Bruyere' (I963), inEssais critiques (Paris: Seuil, I964), pp. 221-36 (p. 234)). Luoni argues that, in iron ingout the aspects of apparent randomness in theorder of the remarques and indeed of thechapters, he isable to arrive at a clearer idea ofwhat La Bruyere really 'thought' about things, largely because, as he correctly asserts, theportraitswere mostly added at a later stage, so as todisrupt any sententious dynamic that could have built up in theearlier editions. The study is thus a kind of annotated paraphrase, divided into five sections (or traites),devoted successively to 'levice' (by far the longest), 'lavertu', 'le ressentiment', 'ledesespoir', and 'la consolation surnaturelle'. There is thenan appen dix devoted toLa Bruyere's religious views, inwhich some welcome consideration is given to theposthumous Dialogues sur...

Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture. By Ann Daly. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002; pp. 320. $19.95 paper.

Western theatrical dance emerges in the late Renaissance as an increasingly autonomous art form. However, as theatrical dance strove toward the ideal of its own aesthetic self-sufficiency, toward an autonomy that would eventually confer it its place as a truly modern art form, dance developed a paradoxically intimate, intricate, and convoluted relationship with its other—writing. The historical persistence of a continuous dialoguing between dancing and writing indicates how dance's aspirations for aesthetic autonomy were precisely that: an impossible (modern) wishing. Historically, the role and function of writing in regards to dance has been one of partnering. This partnering has oscillated among three foundational modes of writings on dance: the archival (writing as the guarantor of dance's historical survival, as seen already in the late 1500s, in Arbeau's Orcheseography), the choreographic (writing as mode of composing dances directly on paper, as seen in the exams for the Académie Royale in late seventeenth-century France), and the writing of criticism. Of these three modes, criticism—understood as writing aimed at explaining or translating to an audience the opacity of dance's appearing—won't emerge in its incipient form until the late eighteenth century. This mode is today the most prominent role writing takes in relation to dance, in which the function of the critic is simultaneously to preserve and explain the dances she witnesses.

Naissance du conte feminin: Mots et Merveilles: Les Contes de fees de Madame d'Aulnoy (1690-1698) (review)

At the outset of her book on Madame d'Aulnoy, Nadine Jasmin defines the object of her study to be an analysis of the "birth of a new literary genre," that of the literary fairy tale, out of the oral tale. In order to explain the emergence and establishment of this new genre, Jasmin takes as her point of departure the fairy-tale corpus of d'Aulnoy, the most prolific fairy-tale writer of late seventeenth-century France, whose tales indeed are more representative of the larger trend than those written by her contemporary, Charles Perrault. Jasmin's study is divided into three sections, the first of which treats the ways in which d'Aulnoy combines various sources—both folkloric and literary—to create a new, autonomous literary genre. Section 2 centers on the "matter" of the tales, or their sociocultural context. In Section 3 (there is also a Section 4 Jasmin does not mention in her general introduction, but which could be considered to be part of Section 3) Jasmin looks at the "manner" of the tales, the stylistic devices and narrative strategies d'Aulnoy employs to create her tales, not to mention her original imaginary worlds.

Madame Guyon and Experiential Theology in America

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717) has been best known for her role in the Quietist controversy of late-seventeenthcentury France, leading to the public debate that pitted her defender, Fenelon, against Bossuet. Madame de Maintenon, the wife of Louis XIV, also became an opponent, adding her influence to that of Bossuet, so that Madame Guyon was imprisoned in the Bastille from 1698 to 1703.

Astrid Lindgren's The Robber's Daughter : A Twentieth-Century Fairy Tale

Astrid Lindgren's The Robber's Daughter:A Twentieth-Century Fairy Tale Eva-Maria Metcalf (bio) When Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart appeared in Swedish in 1973, critic Alf Thoor referred to it as an extraordinary fairy tale.1 The same can be said about Lindgren's more recent novel, The Robber's Daughter, which appeared in Sweden in 1981.2 In what way is The Robber's Daughter an extraordinary fairy tale? What is so special about it? How does it fit into the fairy-tale tradition we are accustomed to, that is, the tradition that emerged in late seventeenth-century France and reached its peak in the early part of the nineteenth century in the Kinder-und Hausmärchen collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm? How does it break with that tradition? These are the main questions I would like to examine more closely in this paper. If The Robber's Daughter is a fairy tale which is outside of the ordinary, why do I insist on calling it a fairy tale? Why not call it a children's novel with fantastic elements, a romance, or a robber's story as Vivi Edström does in a recent article?3 I have chosen this approach to The Robber's Daughter because I find in this novel many motifs and structural elements reminiscent of folk and fairy tales. Lindgren herself has repeatedly pointed to the formative power which the folk and fairy tales she read as a child have had on her literary production (in Törnqvist, 17). And, finally, I want to explore, from the perspective of children's literature, whether and how the fairy tale has survived in modern day typographic and electronic culture. I believe that the fairy tale is very much alive in the form of children's novels by such writers as Michael Ende, Janosch, and Astrid Lindgren. The Robber's Daughter is a fairy tale which has been adapted, transformed and altered to meet the demands and reflect the conceptual horizon of a child growing up in twentieth-century Western society, and it has enough complexity to satisfy the adult reader, as well. Along with major shifts in means of production and communication, narrative patterns also change, retaining only traces of their former manifestations. Walter Ong has expressed this paradox of change for the sake of continuity, which I find manifested in The Robber's Daughter, by saying: "We have to die to continue living." The acknowledgement of [End Page 151] the historicity of the fairy tale is fairly recent and has led to its demystification. In the late nineteen sixties and in the seventies, the underlying authoritarian and sexist attitudes of fairy tales were revealed through "alternative" renditions of the classical fairy tales guided by new value systems. Parodies of Mother Goose and Grimms' fairy tales are now staple entertainment for young and old in newspaper comic strips, as well as on Sesame Street and other children's television programs. Caught in the flood of cheap reproductions to satisfy the steadily growing market for children's books and entertainment, the fairy tale has slowly lost the aura with which it had been endowed in the Romantic age. The search for identity engendered by the rise of nineteenth-century nationalism fostered the collection of national cultural treasures everywhere in Europe and led to the collection of remnants of oral culture—among them fairy tales—and to the formation of a fairy tale canon. As Rudolf Schenda points out, the fairy tale was as much invented as it was discovered, and it was overrepresented at the expense of other varieties of folkloric narrative.4 One of the manifold reasons for the formation of the fairy tale canon was the longing for the naive and direct enjoyment of just hearing or reading a tale. In the estimation of the Grimms, the treasures of folklore were collected at the eleventh hour, for the culture of the text was infringing upon the culture of the spoken word.5 The formulaic, participatory, situational forms of narrative organization were replaced by analytic, distanced, and abstract forms. The Brothers Grimm, along with other Romantic intellectuals, wanted to preserve the...

The Reception of Greek Sources in Late Seventeenth-Century France

Journal Article THE RECEPTION OF GREEK SOURCES IN LATE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE Get access A. H. T. LEVI A. H. T. LEVI ST ANDREWS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume XLII, Issue 4, October 1988, Pages 408–423, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/XLII.4.408 Published: 01 October 1988

Mother Goose and Her Goslings: The France of Louis XIV as Seen through the Fairy Tale

Previous articleNext article No AccessMother Goose and Her Goslings: The France of Louis XIV as Seen through the Fairy TaleDorothy R. ThelanderDorothy R. Thelander Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 54, Number 3Sep., 1982 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/244179 Views: 21Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1982 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Lorenza Lucchi Basili, Pier Luigi Sacco, Peter Walla Princes Charming are not all made equal. The social cognition of mating strategies in four classical fairy tales, Cogent Psychology 5, no.11 (Jan 2018): 1422678.https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2017.1422678Olav Solberg «Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne» – eit klassisk eventyr i europeisk og norsk tradisjon, Edda 94, no.11 (Feb 2007): 3–17.https://doi.org/10.18261/ISSN1500-1989-2007-01-01Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer P, (Jan 2004): 823–887.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-02952-2_16Pieter Spierenburg The Silent Majority: Popular Culture and Life in Villages and Neighborhoods, (Jan 1991): 48–89.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12787-0_3

Rural Charity in Late Seventeenth Century France: The Pontchartrain Case

There has recently been a renewal of interest in seventeenth-century charity and public assistance. The studies which have resulted devote considerable attention to the new societal attitudes toward the poor appearing in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which were reflected in efforts to concentrate and institutionalize benevolent activities. At the same time these works recognize the continuing perception of the poor as the suffering children of Jesus Christ and the spiritually beneficial effects of alleviating their misery.1 As a result we not only know a great deal about the creation and operation of h6pitaux ge'neraux, centralized aumones, the actions