Description
Book SynopsisPerformative Polemic is the first literary historical study to analyze the “war of words” unleashed in the pamphlets denouncing Louis XIV’s absolute monarchy between 1667 and 1715. As conflict erupted between the French ruler and his political enemies, pamphlet writers across Europe penned scathing assaults on the Sun King’s bellicose impulses and expansionist policies. This book investigates how pamphlet writers challenged the monarchy’s monopoly over the performance of sovereignty by contesting the very mechanisms through which the crown legitimized its authority at home and abroad. Author Kathrina LaPorta offers a new conceptual framework for reading pamphlets as political interventions, asserting that an analysis of the pamphlet’s form is crucial to understanding how pamphleteers seduced readers by capitalizing on existing markets in literature, legal writing, and journalism. Pamphlet writers appeal to the theater-going public that would have been attending plays by Molière and Racine, as well as to readers of historical novels and periodicals. Pamphleteers entertained readers as they attacked the performative circuitry behind the curtain of monarchy.
Table of Contents Acknowledgments
Note on Translations
Introduction An Army of Authors
Chapter 1 Performing Justice: Lisola’s
Bouclier d’état et de justice (1667)
Chapter 2 Moving Speech: Performing Memory in
Le Miroir des princes (1684)
Chapter 3 Failure to Perform? Scripting Reform in
Les Soupirs de la France esclave (1689–90)
Chapter 4 Comedy of Erring: Performance in the Underworld in
L’Alcoran de Louis XIV (1695)
Chapter 5 Unbecoming Majesty: Performing Impotence in the
Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696)
Epilogue The King is Dead, Long Live Dissent
Notes
Bibliography
