Hall Bjørnstad
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226803661
- eISBN:
- 9780226803975
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226803975.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
What was absolutism, and how did it work? What was the function of the ostentatious displays of power surrounding Louis XIV at Versailles? What is gained—and what is lost—by approaching such ...
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What was absolutism, and how did it work? What was the function of the ostentatious displays of power surrounding Louis XIV at Versailles? What is gained—and what is lost—by approaching such expressions of absolutism as propaganda, as present-day scholars tend to do? This book argues that the exuberance of Louis XIV’s reign was not top-down propaganda in any modern sense, but rather a dream dreamt collectively, by king, court, image-makers, and nation alike. It explores this dream through a sustained close analysis of a corpus of absolutist artifacts, ranging from Charles Le Brun’s paintings in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles via the king’s under-studied Mémoires to two little-known particularly extravagant verbal and textual celebrations of the king. The dream of absolutism, it concludes, lives at the intersection of politics and aesthetics. It is the carrier of a force that emerges as a glorious image; it is a participatory emotional reality that requires reality to conform to it. It is a dream, finally, that still shapes our collective political imaginary today.Less
What was absolutism, and how did it work? What was the function of the ostentatious displays of power surrounding Louis XIV at Versailles? What is gained—and what is lost—by approaching such expressions of absolutism as propaganda, as present-day scholars tend to do? This book argues that the exuberance of Louis XIV’s reign was not top-down propaganda in any modern sense, but rather a dream dreamt collectively, by king, court, image-makers, and nation alike. It explores this dream through a sustained close analysis of a corpus of absolutist artifacts, ranging from Charles Le Brun’s paintings in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles via the king’s under-studied Mémoires to two little-known particularly extravagant verbal and textual celebrations of the king. The dream of absolutism, it concludes, lives at the intersection of politics and aesthetics. It is the carrier of a force that emerges as a glorious image; it is a participatory emotional reality that requires reality to conform to it. It is a dream, finally, that still shapes our collective political imaginary today.
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