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Even to contemporaries Louis XIII was an enigma, for he seemed to be the very embodiment of opposites. For example, when he overthrew his mother's Regency government in 1617, he claimed she had treated him as a child not as a son, yet the moment his 'coup' was successful he did not attempt to consolidate his authority, but sat on the floor "playing the child" he now claimed his mother had never allowed him to be. Further, he demanded the obedience of his nobility, yet continued to do things which elicited their scorn rather than their respect. After all, he fawned over court favorites, spoke with a stutter and seemed to enjoy his toy canons as much as he did the royal army he now ostensibly controlled. The purpose of this work is to show not only that Louis was a King without majesty, even though he was addressed as 'Your Majesty', but how he gradually came to acquire that majesty under the tutelage of Cardinal Richelieu. It does this first by drawing on the thought of Jean Bodin, the sixteenth century jurist, who showed that majesty flowed from sovereignty, and sovereignty meant that a ruler must not be subject to another in anything. Second, it applies this definition of sovereignty and majesty to Louis XIII, showing in detail how he did not even have control over his own life, much less over his court, country and coasts. It was Richelieu who gave him this control, making his rule unquestioned both in practice and in theory, separating him even from the scrutiny of the Catholic Church by making that Church subordinate to the state. Even more, Richelieu taught Louis how to carry himself like a King. Most of all, however, he taught Louis that the essence of majesty did not lie in demanding obedience but in exuding an authority that commanded it.

The ideal of honesty proposed by civility treaties results from the social and political reorganization orchestrated by Louis XIV's desire to assert his authority and impose a court ritual. Court treaties, like Antoine de Courtin's Le Nouveau traite de la civilite qui se pratique en France parmi les honnetes gens (1671), pass on an ideal of social behaviour in which the appearances are meticulously planned. Based on the principle that the physical appearance is a reflection of the inner self, the body is of great importance in honesty. Propriety books codify gestures and indicate the best attitude, outfit, posture and gait to single out an "honnete homme" from the mass. In order to respect the social standards, he moulds himself an exterior image and, in doing so, he establishes a difference between the public character and the private man. The representation of the body necessarily affects the creation of the "honnete homme"'s personality, which presents many traits of a modern identity.

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This dissertation examines audience, intention, and rhetoric in the writings of Blaise Pascal and Simone Weil. Despite the differences in historical period, ethnic heritage, sex, and milieux, which separate them, these two writers are astonishingly similar with regard to those for whom they wrote--audience--the subject matter of their writings--intention--and their skilled and self-conscious use of language in addressing their audiences and themes--rhetoric. Each of them wrote scientific or philosophical works, and polemical works, intended for a certain public; each of them then wrote, in the final years of their short lives, long notebook or journal entries, a record of spiritual experience which has since been edifying to others besides themselves. The guiding principle here is the function of language. This means how it works (rhetoric), but also, for what purpose (intention) and for whom (audience). We find many metaphors of function in Pascal and Simone Weil. The motivating concern of this dissertation is how Pascal and Simone Weil articulate, through language, God's response to man's yearnings toward God.

This thesis is a comprehensive analysis of the hull remains of La Belle, a ship wrecked off the coast of Texas in 1684 during the failed attempt by Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The analysis of La Belle's hull focused on five research goals. The first was to reconstruct the conception and design of the hull. Because La Belle was built on France's Atlantic coast, it was expected that the ship would fit into Atlantic traditions of shipbuilding. Instead, it exhibits an ancient Mediterranean method known only from Renaissance manuscripts. Until La Belle's discovery no archaeological example associated with this method had been identified. Reconstruction of the lines also revealed the unexpected use of surmarks that reflect a transition from a largely empirical approach to the architecturally-based ship plan. The second goal was the documentation of a previously unstudied ship type, the barque longue, through an analysis and description of the hull's assembly and its comparison to contemporary shipbuilding practices. The third goal was an analysis of newly discovered registries, letters, and documents specific to La Belle that raised fundamental questions regarding the ship's genesis and typological identification. The fourth goal was species identification of the timbers to provide a more detailed picture of forest exploitation and to identify whether Old or New World timbers were used in the repairs noted in the hull. The fifth goal was to obtain information on the origin of the wood through dendrochronological analysis. That analysis raised unexpected questions regarding dating and the possibility of re-use of whole frame sets. Because there are no other investigated late 17th-century shipwreck sites from the Rochefort region with species and dendrochronology data, La Belle has provided a benchmark for these two analyses. These five research foci provide a unique picture of late 17th-century shipbuilding in French Atlantic shipyards and contribute to the study of hull design, ship typology, construction and assembly, wood species use and origin, dendrochronological dating, and timber reuse.

The judicial system of seventeenth-century France is often qualified as vitiated and inefficient. Actually, truth and equity are virtually absent from the court. In these conditions, why would one appeal to institutional justice? Montpellier notables use the judicial system to exert pressure on a debtor, to redress the internal familial order, to sidestep customary practices, to take revenge, to cause harm. Indeed, the question of law is rarely something other than a pretext, and it is precisely because it is vitiated that the judicial system can be used in that way. The analysis of the procedural practices and of the judicial system as they are---instead of as they should be---allows us to penetrate the fascinating universe of social, familial and financial practices. Furthermore, the emphasis on the civil procedures reveals an original perspective which goes beyond the points of view of notarial and criminal archives usually preferred by historiography. The petty Montpellier notables studied here are steering a delicate course between customs, laws and procedures. Far from suffering the imperfections of the judicial system, they are adopting them, appropriating and using them as means of meeting their own objectives. The recourse to justice is similar to a game of chess: the judicial system is the chessboard, its defects are the chess pieces and the jousts, always fought inside the same frameworks and with the same weapons, are opposing various opponents displaying different strategies.

Chapter I is a discussion aimed at providing the reader with a basic understanding of the complex system of social classification that was in a place in ancien regime France for centuries. Chapter II outlines the development of a royal system of justice prior to our period and the royal courts, whose form and hierarchy were the result of years of reform. These chapters represent the judical and social extremes that procedure linked. Chapter III is a thorough and complete discussion of the entire possible process in France during our period. This chapter clearly outlines the order of phases that the French courts followed in a typical prosecution and takes into account that these procedures were the result of years of practice and experience. These three chapters are tied together with a review of the major concepts up to that point and presents a transition from France to a series of chapters devoted to understanding the situation in Massachusetts Bay Colongy. Chapter V offers chronological approach to the development of both laws and courts in the colony. Chapter VI consists of discussion of the procedures used in the colonial courts, and attempts to identify the major English and Puritan influences within the colonial process as they arise. Again, these three chapters are tied together with a review of the major conclusions to be derived from the chapters on Massachusetts. This study concludes with Chapter VII, which offers the reader the comparative analysis of the two systems of procedure. This comparative chapter is structured to reflect the three basic functions we ascribed to criminal procedure at the outset of this discussion. / 268 leaves ; 28 cm.

In seventeenth-century France a new type of theatre was established to correspond to the ideals and taste of the dominant social group. As part of the process a particular ideal was forged for the new-style actor. Moulded by classical writings on acting and actors which suggested that the; style of serious, cultured acting operated within the same aesthetic as that of oratorical delivery, this ideal similarly identified refined acting with principles of pronuntiatio and the bienséance acceptable in contemporary formal discourse As a result of this identification no separate art of acting was considered necessary in seventeenth-century France, the rules and principles of expression of emotion in oratorical delivery being accepted as valid for serious acting. It is to these rules and. principles therefore that recourse must be made if the style of seventeenth-century acting and the approach of the actor at this period are to be appreciated. Study of seventeenth-century French treatises on oratorical delivery indicates the extent to which expression of emotion was considered to require study and practise of basic principal which would enable the speaker to evoke a particular passion by appropriately moving tones and accompanying gesture, and yet at the same time remain within a socially-acceptable range. Interpretation of seventeenth-century writings Oil actors and acting in light of these principles highlights the declamatory nature of serious acting of this period. The actor was understood to approach his role with a view to representing and thus exciting passions through effective vocal variation and suitably decorous accompanying gesture (body-language). Attention was focused upon the actor's voice, upon his moving tones and cadences, and upon the grace with which he used his body to reinforce such emotional portrayal. During the eighteenth century this conception-of acting and the style it had produced were called into question. Acting began to evolve its own aesthetic, an aesthetic based upon impersonation of character through personal identification and experience of the effects of emotion in real life. Study of rules to regulate emotional expression and imitation of the best models were abandoned in favour of cultivation of artistic sensibility: recourse to the imagination and personal sensitivity. In the process emphasis shifted from the voice to non-linguistic ways of showing feeling on the stage, and gestural expression released itself from subjection to social bienséance and enriched its range and potential. Evidence of these trends as well as fidelity to or reaction against principles of bienséance may be traced in writings on acting and delivery of the first half of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the century acting theory was still rooted in and patterned on the model of pronuntiatio. By 1750 it had established its worth as an independent art with principles more directly based upon the dramatic experience.