Richelieu's Desmarets and the Century of Louis XIV

ISBN-13: 9780198151579 / Angielski / Twarda / 1990 / 416 str.

Hugh Gaston Hall

Opis

Jean Desmarets, later Sieur de Saint-Sorlin, was a late Renaissance `universal man': first Chancellor and founder-member of the Académie-française, last jester of the French royal court and star performer in ballets, novelist, playwright, poet, architect, inventor, and mystic. He was also the first man to publicize the notion of `a century of Louis XIV'. Hugh Gaston Hall's book examines that notion by looking afresh at Desmarets' vigorous career and relating the `century of Louis XIV' to its origins in the reign of Louis XIII. It questions historical misconceptions about Cardinal Richelieu's cultural policies and demonstrates the importance for the Court ballet of his patronage. Giovanni Bernini's illusionist sets and lighting effects for the Grand'Salle, which later became Molière's theatre and the Opéra, are discussed here in English for the first time. Desmarets' many high-level court offices, his family connections, and works - ballets, plays, poems, and religious and polemical pieces - reveal new and important links with contemporary institutions and preoccupations. In particular Dr Hall considers the plays in the light of exemplary eloquence, and considers the intentions of the Académie-française, and the Quarrel of the Imaginaires, in relation to royal policy and the Cartesian revolution.

Jean Desmarets was a late Renaissance universal man. He was a founder-member of the Academie-francaise, a novelist, playwright, poet, and architect. This book reassesses his career in the context of Richelieu's cultural policies and relates the notion of a 'century of Louis XIV' to its origins in the reign of Louis XIII.

Recenzje

'Hall makes a compelling case for reexamining accepted views of the century and, indeed, for reading Desmarets ... marked by formidable erudition.' Helen Bates McDermott, University of Minnesota, French Review