Richelieu's Desmarets and the century of Louis XIV

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Richelieu's Desmarets and the century of Louis XIV

Hugh Gaston Hall

Clarendon Press , Oxford University Press, 1990

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Note

Bibliography: p. [357]-378

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Jean Desmarets, later Sieur de Saint-Sorlin, was a late Renaissance `universal man': first Chancellor and founder-member of the Academie-francaise, 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 Moliere's theatre and the Opera, 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 Academie-francaise, and the Quarrel of the Imaginaires, in relation to royal policy and the Cartesian revolution.

Table of Contents

  • Jean Desmarets and the century of Louis 14
  • family
  • the "celebre marets" of court ballet
  • missions and offices
  • the novels and the new academie - francaise
  • Richelieu, Desmarets and theatre
  • "Les Visionnaires"
  • the historical tragicomedies
  • plays for the grand salle of the Palais - Cardinal
  • "La Felicite" and "La Prosperite"
  • short poems and games
  • devotional poetry
  • devotional prose
  • "Clovis, ou la France Chrestienne"
  • the late biblical and heroic poems
  • the quarrel of the "Imaginaires".

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