Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:25:50.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theatrical Legitimation: Forms of French Patronage and Portraiture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Timothy Murray
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Seventeenth-century French patronage of the theater was an ideal means of political legitimation. While Louis xm sporadically exercised patronage through royal decrees and attendance at comedies, the Cardinal de Richelieu, who better understood the theater's political benefits, actively influenced its technical aspects: the acting companies, the scripts, and the dramatic conventions and mechanics. The goal of Richelieu's patronage was the beholders' symbolic identification of the elements of refined theater with the genius of the cardinal underwriting them. The lansenists' tracts against the theater scorned this sort of symbolic transference as a commonplace of dramatic “portraiture.” Pierre Nicole's theory of spectatorship criticized the beholder's tendency to accept theatrical images as models of imitation, which gave life to a world of simulacra advantageous to political representation. The phantasmic force of the illusion of legitimacy fueled the system of art and politics in seventeenth-century France.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 98 , Issue 2 , March 1983 , pp. 170 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adam, Antoine. Histoire de la littérature française au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Editions Domat-Montchrestien, 1948. Vol. 1.Google Scholar
“L'Ami du Cid à Claveret.” In Recueil des bonnes pièces qui ont esté faites pour & contre Le Cid, par les bons esprits de ce temps. Paris: Nicolas Traboulliet, 1637.Google Scholar
Arnaud, Charles. Etude sur la vie et les œuvres de l'Abbé d'Aubignac et sur les théories dramatiques au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1887.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Barish, Jonas A. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Bosse, Abraham. Traité des pratiques géométrales & perspectives enseignées dans l'Académie royale de la peinture et sculpture. Paris, 1665.Google Scholar
Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne. Maximes & réflexions sur la comédie. Paris: J. Anisson, 1694.Google Scholar
Cavell, Stanley. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Cavell, Stanley. Must We Mean What We Say? Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Conti, Prince de, de Bourbon, Armand. Traité de la comédie et des spectacles, selon la tradition de l'église. Paris: Louis Billaine, 1666.Google Scholar
Corneille, Pierre. Théâtre complet. Paris: Edition Garnier, 1971.Google Scholar
Coypel, Antoine. L'Excellence de la peinture. In Discours prononcés dans les conferences de l'Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Ed. Jouin, Nicolas. Paris: J. Collombat, 1721.Google Scholar
Craven, David. “Hans Haacke and the Aesthetics of Legitimation.” Parachute 23 (Summer 1981):5–11.Google Scholar
Deierkauf-Holsboer, Wilma. L'Histoire de la mise en scène dans le théâtre français à Paris de 1600 à 1673. Paris: Librairie A. Nizet, 1960.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1980.Google Scholar
de Marolles, Michel. Mémoires. Amsterdam, 1755. Vol. 1.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Limited Inc abc.” Glyph 2 (1977): 164–254.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Signature Event Context.” Glyph 1 (1977): 172–97.Google Scholar
de Vesme, Alexandre, and Massar, Phyllis Dearborn. Stefano della Bella. New York: Collectors Editions, 1971.Google Scholar
Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française. 1694; rpt. Genève: Slatkine, 1964. Vol. 2.Google Scholar
Le Dictionnaire universel d'Antoine Furetière. 1690; rpt. Paris: Le Robert, 1978. Vol. 3.Google Scholar
Duvignaud, Jean. Sociologie du théâtre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965.Google Scholar
Felman, Shoshana. Le Scandale du corps parlant: Don Juan avec Austin ou la séduction en deux langues. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley E. “How to Do Things with Austin and Searle: Speech Act Theory and Literary Criticism.” MLN 91 (1976):939–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fish, Stanley E. “With the Compliments of the Author: Reflections on Austin and Derrida.” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982):693–721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fréart, Roland, de Chambray, Sieur. Idée de la perfection de la peinture demonstrée par les principes de l'art. Le Mans: J. Ysambert, 1662.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion.” Glyph 8 (1981): 40–61.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. Legitimation Crisis. Trans. McCarthy, Thomas. Boston: Beacon, 1975.Google Scholar
Hédelin, François, d'Aubignac, Abbé. Dissertation sur la condamnation des théâtres. Paris: N. Pepingué, 1666.Google Scholar
Hedrick, Donald K. “Merry and Weary Conversation: Textual Uncertainty in As You Like It, II. iv.” ELH 46 (1979):21–34.Google Scholar
Johnson, Barbara. “Poetry and Performative Language: Mallarmé and Austin.” In her The Critical Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980, 52–66.Google Scholar
Lacour, Léopold. Richelieu dramaturge et ses collaborateurs. Paris: Librairie Ollendorff, 1925.Google Scholar
Lancaster, Henry C. A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century. Part 2. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1932.Google Scholar
Lawrenson, T. E. The French Stage in the XVIIth Century. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Lewis, Philip E. La Rochefoucauld: The Art of Abstraction. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. La Condition postmoderne. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. Economie libidinale. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1974.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. Rudiments païens, genre dissertatif. Paris: 10/18, 1977.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François, and Thébaud, Jean-Loup. Au Juste. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1979.Google Scholar
Marin, Louis. La Critique du discours. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1975.Google Scholar
Marin, Louis. Le Portrait du roi. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1981.Google Scholar
Marin, Louis. Le Récit est un piège. Paris: Editions du Minuit, 1978.Google Scholar
Murray, Timothy C. “Richelieu's Theater: The Mirror of a Prince.” Renaissance Drama ns 8 (1977): 275–97.Google Scholar
Nicole, Pierre. “De la comédie.” In Les Visionnaires. Liège: Adolphe Beyers, 1667.Google Scholar
Nicole, Pierre. “De la connoissance de soy-même.” In Essais de morale. Paris: Guill. Desprez, 1657. Vol. 3.Google Scholar
Orgel, Stephen. The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Orgel, Stephen. “The Poetics of Spectacle.” New Literary History 2 (1971):367–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orgel, Stephen. “The Royal Theatre and the Role of the King.” In Patronage in the Renaissance. Ed. Lytle, Guy Fitch and Orgel, Stephen. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981, 261–73.Google Scholar
Parfaict, François. Histoire du théâtre francois. Paris: Lemercier et Saillant, 1747. Vol. 6.Google Scholar
Pellison-Fontanier, Paul. Relations contenant l'histoire de l'Académie Françoise. Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1653.Google Scholar
Ranum, Orest. The Artisans of Glory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Robert, Paul. Dictionnaire alphabétique de la langue française. Paris: Société du Nouveau Littré, 1959.Google Scholar
Schneider, Monique. “The Promise of Truth—The Promise of Love.” Diacritics 11 (Fall 1981):27–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serlio, Sebastiano. The First [-Fift] Booke of Architecture. London: R. Peake, 1611.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Revolutions That as of Yet Have No Model: Derrida's ‘Limited Inc.‘” Diacritics 8 (Winter 1980): 29–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Samuel. “It.” Glyph 4 (1978): 1–31.Google Scholar
Wiley, W. L. The Early Public Theater in France. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Wind, Edgar. “Studies of Allegorical Portraiture I.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 1 (1937–38):138–62.Google Scholar