Les fêtes et les cérémonies, de Cour, publiques ou privées, firent partie des grandes heures du règne de Louis XIV. Charles Le Brun, le Premier peintre du roi, magnifia quelques-unes de ces brillantes célébrations, associant apparat, musique, danse ou feux d’artifice. Les peintures, sculptures, tapisseries ou grandes structures, telles que des arcs de triomphe, étaient conçues ou disposées afin de s’adapter aux divertissements ou aux cérémonies, métamorphosant pendant quelques heures les édifices ou les jardins. Détruites à la fin des événements qu’elles accompagnaient, ces œuvres ont reçu peu d’attention jusqu’à présent. L’analyse des sources contemporaines et des images des décors permet de restituer ces ouvrages, mais également de les replacer dans leur contexte. La genèse de ces œuvres, leur conception et leur fabrication sont étudiées, redessinant les liens que Le Brun avait tissés avec les hommes d’État (le roi, Séguier, Fouquet et Colbert), avec les hommes de lettres, ainsi qu’avec ses principaux collaborateurs, notamment à la Manufacture des Gobelins. L’une des particularités de Le Brun dans ce domaine fut d’ordonner lui-même des fêtes et des cérémonies, ce qui constitue peut-être un cas unique pour un peintre à cette période. Ces œuvres oubliées complètent donc le portrait d’un des plus grands artistes français du XVIIe siècle. Plus que tout autre ouvrage, les décorations ordonnées par Le Brun donnent l’image la plus juste de ses recherches et de ses goûts. Enfin, l’étude de ces fêtes et de leur réception offre une meilleure compréhension de ces moments éphémères, tout en leur conférant la pérennité qu’ils méritent. / Religious ceremonies and festivals, courtly, public or private, constituted the most glorious moments of the reign of Louis XIV. Charles Le Brun, the King’s First Painter, enhanced some of these brilliant celebrations, involving pageantry, music, dance or fireworks. The paintings, sculptures, tapestries or great structures, such as triumphal arches, were designed or arranged to adapt to entertainment or ceremonies, transforming for a few hours gardens or buildings. Destroyed at the end of the events that required them, these works have received little attention until now. In this study, contemporary descriptions and reproductions of Le Bruns decorations are analyzed and brought to light to set them in the context of their day. The origin of these works, their conception and their making are studied, showing Le Bruns connections with statesmen (the King, Seguier, Fouquet and Colbert), with men of letters, and with other artists and workers, in particular those at the Gobelins Manufactory. One of the particularities of Le Brun in this domain was to commission himself festivals and ceremonies, which was perhaps a unique case for an artist at that time. These forgotten works round out the portrait of one of France’s greatest XVIIth Century artists. More than any other work, the decorations commissioned by Le Brun give the most accurate image of his research and taste. Finally, the study of these festivals and their reception offers a better understanding of these ephemeral moments, while giving them a permanence they deserve.

Au XVIIe siècle, commerce et guerre étant étroitement liés (Pocock), les auteurs de cette époque accordent une grande importance aux liens entre conflits et monnaie. Cette thèse met en évidence comment la conception de la monnaie, sous forme de métaux précieux, influence la manière d’envisager la question de l’enrichissement chez Colbert, Vauban et Locke. Elle montre également quelles sont les implications en matière de politiques économiques et de relations sociales. Ces auteurs développent ainsi une pensée pouvant être qualifiée«d’hétérodoxe», en opposition à l’orthodoxie d’Adam Smith qui critique vivement leur question d’une quantité de monnaie nécessaire au fonctionnement du système économique. Dans ce cadre, quatre questions sont traitées. La première consiste à mettre à jour les effets sociaux d’une économie monétaire : l’apparition d’un conflit entre propriétaires terriens et détenteurs de monnaie et la création du gouvernement civil. La seconde permet de souligner le lien entre les relations sociales et les politiques monétaires à mener – à savoir favoriser l’intérêt des marchands ou maintenir une stabilité sociale? La troisième question aborde alors le rôle du gouvernement et des leviers dont il dispose. Le gouvernement doit garantir une quantité de monnaie appropriée, maintenir une balance commerciale excédentaire et faire circuler la monnaie, via une stabilité monétaire ou encore une réforme fiscale. Enfin la dernière question permet d’appréhender le rôle du commerce international. Celui-ci, n’est qu’un moyen de faire circuler la richesse créée au niveau national, selon ces auteurs. Par ailleurs, seul le commerce international permet l’entrée de monnaie sous la forme de métaux précieux. / In the 17th century, trade and war are deeply related (Pocock). Thus, authors from thatperiod gave a great importance to the links between conflicts and money. This PhD aims at understanding how the idea of money, as a precious metal, influences Colbert’s, Vauban’s and Locke’s thinking about the question of the enrichment. It further studies the implications of this approach for economic policy and social relations. These authors can be considered as« heterodox » in opposition to the orthodoxy of Adam Smith who sharply criticized their investigation of an appropriate quantity of money needed to ensure the good functioning of an economic system. In this framework, four questions are analysed. The first one discusses the social effects of a monetary economy in the form of the appearance of a conflict between the landed men and the moneyed men, that ultimately leads to the establishment of a civil government. The second one underlines the link between social relations and the required monetary policies: shall measures favour merchants’ interest or shall they maintain social stability? This brings the reader to the third question, which is to define the role of the government and its means of action. The government must ensure that an appropriate quantity of money, maintain a trade surplus and make money circulate. This can be achieved through a monetary stability or by implementing fiscal reform. Finally, the last question revolves around the role of international trade. According to these authors, it is mainly a mean allowing wealth which is created inside the country, to circulate. Besides, international trade is the only way to have inflows of precious metal, thus increasing the quantity of money in the country.

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Tableau d'honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdorales, 2015-2016 / La France du XVIIe siècle s’ouvre sur le monde et Louis XIV pose son regard sur l’Asie. Point important du développement politique et économique des puissants royaumes d’Europe, plusieurs régions asiatiques figurent au centre des ambitions politiques et économiques des royautés européennes, dont le Japon, l’Inde et la Chine. Dans l’objectif de servir les désirs d’expansion du roi français, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) orchestre une mission en Asie, avec comme principal but, l’établissement de missionnaires jésuites français en Chine. Ces ardents religieux et intellectuels aguerris ont pour mandat de contribuer à l’édification de l’Église de Chine par la diffusion du christianisme et le développement d’un clergé français. De plus, les jésuites français, membres de l’Académie royale des sciences de Paris, ont pour mission d’étudier la Chine en profondeur et parfaire les connaissances européennes de ce pays lointain en divers domaines, notamment pour la géographie, les sciences, la politique, la faune et la flore, l’urbanisme, la langue et biens d’autres sujets. Enfin, les missionnaires doivent représenter la France auprès de l’empereur Kangxi dans l’objectif de développer des relations diplomatiques entre les deux royaumes.

The eighteenth century witnessed a sea change in the French economy. In the century prior, Louis XIV had overseen a tightly regulated feudal economy, explicitly engineered to augment the wealth and power of the reigning monarch. His finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, pioneered a decidedly Gallic form of mercantilism, marked by a system of privileged monopolies whose operations were subject to exacting state control. However, in the decades following the Sun King’s death, the Colbertist paradigm came under threat – eroded by a series of liberalizing initiatives that edged the French economy towards a capitalist modernity. As Enlightenment philosophers touted the freedom and meritocracy of laissez-faire economics, segments of the Third Estate pushed back against the regulations which circumscribed their social autonomy. This tension between capitalist aspiration and mercantilist malaise reached a tipping point in the French Revolution, where a wave of liberalizing reforms wiped away the last vestiges of the Colbertist system. The Ancien Régime’s crumbling network of privileges, monopolies, and feudal hierarchies was replaced by a system of property rights designed to promote entrepreneurialism, free enterprise, and upward mobility. Opera became a key site of deregulation under the Revolution’s capitalist reforms. During the grand siècle, opera functioned as an extension of the absolutist state, with the Académie Royale de Musique – ostensibly a court institution – claiming a total monopoly over operatic performance. However, over the course of the eighteenth century, this primacy was undermined as new competitors challenged its share of the market. The introduction of a state subsidy for the Comédie-Italienne, the growing market for regional and colonial opera (in Marseille, Bordeaux, Saint-Domingue, etc.), and the popularity of commercial entertainments (like the fairground and boulevard theaters) threatened the Académie Royale de Musique’s stranglehold over operatic production, paving the way for the free-market reforms of the Revolution. Finally, in 1791, Isaac René Guy Le Chapelier introduced legislation to liberalize the French theater industry, abolishing theatrical monopolies and ending state subsidies. Theater was now a capitalist enterprise. This dissertation interrogates the relationship between opera and capitalism in eighteenth-century France and its colonies. Taking the Le Chapelier law as its endpoint, it seeks to demonstrate why opera became a central focus of the Revolution’s deregulatory zeal. I position opera at the vanguard of eighteenth-century liberalization efforts, showing how it embraced new commercial techniques and adapted to emerging economic freedoms. A series of institutional histories chart opera’s gradual induction into the capitalist marketplace during the Enlightenment, highlighting institutions that played a pivotal role in challenging Colbertist economic policy. Ultimately, I argue that opera houses, increasingly entangled in nascent forms of French capitalism, became cheerleaders for the burgeoning free market, profiting from affectionate, glamorous, or downright utopian portrayals of commercial life. Opera and capitalism became locked in a self-replicating feedback loop: the more that operatic institutions became enmeshed in the rise of capitalism, the more they promoted capitalist ideals. Seven chapters, proceeding chronologically from the Regency to the Terror, examine vital flashpoints in the intersection of opera and capitalism in eighteenth-century France – culminating in a reappraisal of the Le Chapelier law and its effects on the opera industry. Traversing a range of operatic institutions – in the metropole and in the colonies – these case studies not only show how opera companies embraced capitalist business practices, but also how they reconfigured operatic aesthetics to champion laissez-faire ideologies. The first chapter triangulates the symbiotic relationship between the Théâtres de la Foire, the finance industry, and urban capitalism through an analysis of financier characters in vaudeville comedy. The second chapter situates the vocalizing body of Madame de Pompadour at the intersection of pastoral opera, Italianate musical aesthetics, and physiocratic economic thought, offering a close reading of the operas she commissioned for Théâtre des Petits Cabinets. Chapter 3 explores the forced merger of the Théâtres de la Foire and the Comédie-Italienne in 1762, suggesting that the new hybrid troupe weathered this institutional shift by staging opéras-comiques that depicted the commercial sector. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 turn to the colonial theaters of Saint-Domingue. First, I dissect the business practices of these commercial enterprises, highlighting their reliance on planter capital. Then, I outline the effects of this colonial capitalism on local operatic aesthetics, arguing that Caribbean troupes used promises of celebrity and spectacle to boost ticket sales. I demonstrate that theaters in Saint-Domingue used these unique aesthetic practices to promote a deregulated plantation economy in which planters exercised unmitigated control over enslaved workers. Finally, in Chapter 7, I return to the Comédie-Italienne (now rebranded the Opéra-Comique National) to examine the effects of the Le Chapelier law on theatrical policy during the Terror. Here, I challenge the assumption that the Montagnard regime reversed the economic freedoms wrought by the Le Chapelier law and reposition the revolutionary pièce de circonstance as a decidedly commercial operatic genre. Ultimately, I argue that opera played a vital role in bringing aspects of early capitalism into French public discourse during the eighteenth century. Over the course of this dissertation, I show that lyric theater, in representing a nascent free market onstage, inducted liberal fiscal dogma into the cultural psyche, entrenching it as a central facet of cultural modernity.

The Internet, and Web 2.0 tools can empower audiences to actively participate in media creation. This allows the production of large quantities of content, both amateur and professional. Online memes, which are extensions of usually citizen-created viral content, are a recent and popular example of this. This thesis examines the participation of ordinary individuals in political culture online through humor creation. It focuses on citizen-made political humor memes as an example of engaged citizen discourse. The memes comprise of photographs of political figures altered either by captions or image editing software, and can be compared to more traditional mediums such as political cartoons, and 'green screens' used in filmmaking. Popular culture is often used as a 'common language' to communicate meanings in these texts. This thesis thus examines the relationship between political and popular culture. It also discusses the value of 'affinity spaces', which actively encourage users to participate in creating and sharing the humorous political texts. Some examples of the political humor memes include: the subversion of Vladimir Putin's power by poking fun at his masculine characteristics through acts similar to fanfiction, celebrating Barack Obama’s love of Star Wars, comparing a candid photograph of John McCain to fictional nonhuman creatures such as zombies using photomanipulation, and the wide variety of immediate responses to Osama bin Laden's death. This thesis argues that much of the idiosyncratic nature of the political humor memes comes from a motivation that lies in non-serious play, though they can potentially offer legitimate political criticism through the myths 'poached' from popular culture.