{"title":"The Architecture of Arcadia: Quinault, Lully, and the Complicit Spectator of the Tragédie en Musique","authors":"Alison Calhoun","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13166031973952","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13166031973952","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Most analyses of the Arcadia of the Ancien régime interpret pastoral politically as a place built in contrast to court life, a contrast that manifested itself iconographically as pastoral scenes built in the foreground of palatial backdrops, or Arcadian, garden-like courtyards. But, in the context of theatre, the scenography of pastoral was also constructed as a peaceful, verdant setting that opposed the dangers and marvels of mythological places and characters put into motion by machines. Even though Arcadia was a rather artificial version of a simple garden or forest, it was nevertheless part of a visual tradition that was understood as a possible world. For Philippe Quinault and Jean-Baptiste Lully, the pastoral space was key to harmonizing not only the singing, but also the ever-increasing use of machines and spectacular scene changes of early musical tragedy. Thanks to its familiar topoi, the pastoral setting (evident in didascalies, iconography, and within the verses of Quinault's libretti) created visual cues that helped forge a complicit spectator for this new form of tragedy, promoting credibility, and inciting specific emotions. Most importantly to the history of theatrical reception, the balance between the familiarity of pastoral and the strangeness of mythology encouraged the spectator to redefine the limits of aesthetic distance to include greater degrees of artificiality and fiction.","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"114 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13166031973952","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65678672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Le cercle de la princesse des Ursins à Rome (1675–1701): un foyer de culture française","authors":"A. Goulet","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13166031973754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13166031973754","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Mariée à Flavio Orsini en 1675, Marie-Anne de La Trémoille, plus connue sous le nom de princesse des Ursins, parvint à faire de son salon à Rome un haut lieu de la culture française, dans la lignée des salons parisiens comme l'Hôtel de Rambouillet au sommet de sa gloire. À Rome, le fonds Orsini de l'Archivio Storico Capitolino et le fonds Lante della Rovere de l'Archivio di Stato contiennent deux séries de lettres, négligées jusqu'à aujourd'hui, qui offrent des informations nouvelles sur la place de la musique, de la poésie et des divertissements dans la vie sociale des Orsini, très attachés à la monarchie française. Ces lettres attestent l'existence d'un salon littéraire à la française dans le palais Orsini, fondé sur l'activité de la conversation, qui englobait elle-même divertissements poétiques et musicaux. Le salon de la princesse des Ursins, perçu à Rome comme le lieu d'un 'vivere alla francese', constitue un cas de transfert culturel qui mérite d'être étudié. En exploitant le versant politique de la galanterie, Marie-Anne de La Trémoille réussit à mettre en place un lieu influent, qui participait au prestige de la nation française.","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"60 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13166031973754","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65678017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Professor Henry Thomas Barnwell","authors":"N. Peacock","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13166031974032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13166031974032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"136 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13166031974032","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65678867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Fail Better': Pascal and the Good Uses of Failure","authors":"H. Bjørnstad","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13166031973790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13166031973790","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article proposes a new approach to the Pensées of Blaise Pascal by focusing on the notion of failure. It shows how failure lies at the core of Pascal's apologetic project in the Pensées and suggests that Pascal urges the reader to confront and reinterpret his own inevitable failure. The article identifies two models of secular failure in the Pensées, arguing for their importance for readers of Pascal today, and especially for answering the thorny question of what it would mean for a secular reader to take Pascal seriously when he speaks of 'la misère de l'homme sans Dieu'.","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"72 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13166031973790","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65678096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gendering Metamorphosis in d'Aulnoy's 'Babiole'","authors":"A. Birberick","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13166031973871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13166031973871","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores how Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy uses the fairy-tale trope of metamorphosis not only to blur the distinction between human and animal but also to comment upon notions of femininity and masculinity. In 'Babiole', the heroine is transformed into a guenon, a kind of female monkey also used to denote an ugly woman in seventeenth-century France. Although the monkey-princess undergoes a civilizing process, she is always viewed by others as an inferior creature whose animality defines her. Babiole's experience contrasts sharply with that of her male fairy-tale counterpart, the Prince Marcassin, who is transformed into a boar. By comparing Babiole to Prince Marcassin, we see the extent to which d'Aulnoy's choice of animal for each metamorphosis is not arbitrary.","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"102 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13166031973871","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65678410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"La Bruyère: the Moralist in Space","authors":"M. Moriarty","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13166031973998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13166031973998","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Roland Barthes describes Les Caractères as a 'remarquable collection de substances, de lieux, d'usages, d'attitudes'. The article comments upon the links La Bruyère establishes between places, 'usages', and 'attitudes', and how this contributes to his moraliste project. La Bruyère's characters seek to manage their spaces, both outdoors and in. He links his portrayal of character-types to specific external locations: districts of Paris, churches, places of public resort such as the Tuileries. Contemporary descriptions of Paris are drawn on to illuminate these connections. He shows his characters confined to one district, or moving about the city in endless displacements, out of routine or to gratify their passions. In his presentation of internal spaces, La Bruyère frequently focuses on their capacity to express relations of power, usually through exclusion. Private inaccessible space is associated with dubious or corrupt passions, whereas the philosopher, willing to do good to his fellow-creatures, keeps his door open. The final spatial dimension explored is the astronomical: La Bruyère's religious apologetic evokes the immense distances of outer space. Through the Caractères, he seeks to highlight and discredit the image of space that serves as the background to our daily lives, a space punctuated with objects of an illusory and self-centred desire, around which we propel ourselves in obedience to our passions, in a state of estrangement from God.","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"127 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13166031973998","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65678690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Controversy and Consolation: The Animal in the Royal Court, Madame and her Spaniels","authors":"C. Probes","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13025317627667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13025317627667","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 'Elle a des lumières', wrote Leibniz in admiration of Madame Palatine, with whom he corresponded about scientific progress. Against the backdrop of the pervasive controversy over l'animalité, Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz, living in what she considered an 'alien world', writes: 'Dogs are the best people I have found in France, I always have four of them with and around me'. I explore in Madame's letters the contours of the controversy over l'animalité, the borderlines of the human, human/animal relationships, and the important role of animals, notably dogs, in her daily life. I consider among other points Madame's philosophical and theological reflections concerning animals, Mignard's lost portrait of her favourite dog, physical and affective comfort, true friendship (comparisons between the friendships of humans and that of dogs), and finally, Madame's dogs as actors in anecdotes she relates to her correspondents. Echoing Sainte-Beuve's declaration, 'Madame est un utile, un précieux et incomparable témoin de moeurs', prominent historians of our day such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, remind us of Madame's extensive epistolary network, extolling the merit of her letters as an exceptional mirror of a crucial period of early modern Europe.","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"16 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13025317627667","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65677845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hommes, bêtes et 'Fondins' chez Gabriel de Foigny","authors":"I. Moreau","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13025317627784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13025317627784","url":null,"abstract":"Lorsqu’il decrit les animaux qui peuplent les differentes contrees visitees par son personnage, Gabriel de Foigny joue a l’evidence sur les topiques des recits de voyage. Dans La Terre australe connue, les frontieres entre le singulier, le monstrueux et la mirabilia apparaissent eminemment instables. La possibilite meme de races de monstres anthropomorphes temoigne d’un dangereux brouillage entre les especes animale et humaine. Ce jeu sur les frontieres de l’animalite menace la superiorite ontologique de l’homme et prepare le travail de destabilisation apporte par l’utopie hermaphrodite, ou l’homme sexue est de fait degrade en demi-homme et assimile a l’animal. Nous nous interesserons ici aux implications impies de cette redefinition de l’homme par la bete. Nous verrons que le rejet de l’animalite, en terre australe, est la consequence d’une conception profondement heterodoxe de l’âme humaine. L’interdit de manger de la chair et l’horreur de l’animalite sont d’autant plus forts que les australiens recusent par ailleurs les principaux points de doctrine chretienne qui permettraient de justifier leur superiorite ontologique. Gabriel de Foigny herite ici de tout un argumentaire impie qui, de Vanini a Cyrano, en passant par La Mothe Le Vayer, s’est attaque aux principaux dogmes chretiens, au point de mettre en peril la notion meme d’espece humaine.","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"49 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13025317627784","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65678261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hippolyte's Coursiers oisifs: Poussin, Racine and Animals Untamed","authors":"N. Hammond","doi":"10.1179/175226911X13025317627748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1179/175226911X13025317627748","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, the interaction between animals and humans in two works by Poussin and Racine, Poussin's 'Paysage avec un homme tué par un serpent' (1648) and Racine's Phèdre (1677), are considered. The focus of enquiry is firstly on the unsettling effect that untamed animals have on the ordered human world as depicted in the seventeenth century, drawn from anthropologist Tim Ingold's distinction between two kinds of animality (domain and condition). It is secondly upon the way in which both painter and play-wright force us to view such destabilising spectacles through the multi-layered response of others. Included in the analysis are readings of Poussin by various commentators, most prominently T. J. Clark, and an examination of the loss of control of Hippolyte (whose name after all means 'horse liberator/loosener') over his horses. My final argument will hinge on the idea that the perilous interplay between man and beast reveals a world of ambiguity and uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":88312,"journal":{"name":"Seventeenth-century French studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"39 - 48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1179/175226911X13025317627748","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65677541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}