[No abstract available] / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

The establishment of the French Absolutism under King Louis XIV depended in part on pictorial representation generated by the French Academy. As a vehicle and institute of the state, the Academy created a canon of imagery, which was known throughout Europe. This enabled Louis XIV's image to be reversed by the creators of the satirical images. The makers of the reverse image appropriated the institutionalized styles and genres of royal portraiture to create innovative satirical images of the monarch using the very canon Louis XIV sanctioned. In its analysis of a small body of satirical imagery, the thesis draws on various theories about the body of the king proposed by Jean-Marie Apostolides, Ernst Kantorowicz and Louis Marin. A comparison of satirical images with official images of the king demonstrates the successful strategies of satirical imagery and the collective need for these kinds images in the seventeenth century.

No description available.

In this thesis I examine the manuscript collection held at the château of Vincennes during the reign of Charles V of France (1364-1380). From the original collection of fifty-six, dispersed after the king’s death in 1380, ten complete manuscripts and one fragment are extant. Through an analysis of the existing manuscripts and information taken from the 1380 inventory of the king’s collections at Vincennes, I consider these manuscripts as a curatorial grouping that forms its own system of meaning, independent of the king’s larger collection of manuscripts at the Louvre. I argue that this collection conveyed a coherent and concerted collection practice, and examine the ways these manuscripts shaped royal identity and animated social memory Charles V “le Sage” was the third of the Valois kings of France and ruled during the Hundred Years’ War. Interestingly, in this time of relative instability, Charles established what is known as his most lasting cultural achievement, a royal library at the Louvre in 1368. All that remains of Charles’s impressive collection of over a thousand manuscripts are detailed inventories compiled by his court officers as well as a limited selection of surviving manuscripts. The royal inventory describes the contents of each volume, the exterior ornamentation and binding, and the interior illumination. Although these records are not detailed enough to reconstruct books that are now lost, it is clear that this collection was extremely luxurious both in the exterior decoration and interior painting. Among the manuscript paintings in this collection there exists a stylistic continuity, with many of the illustrations either executed by or in the style of Parisian illuminator Jean Pucelle. I maintain that this stylistic continuity, among other characteristics, define these manuscripts as a collection. Furthermore, I present an alternative model for interpreting the manuscripts at Vincennes that emphasizes how the works functioned collectively. I argue that all of the unifying characteristics of this collection carried meaning for the reader or viewer at Vincennes. This includes the fact that, according to the specifics of the inventories, virtually all of these manuscripts were originally intended for a reader other than Charles, suggesting a heretofore-unexplored memorial function of the collection. / text

From 1589 to 1599, the relation between Henri IV and the Parlement of Paris was a tumultuous one. Some parlementaires associated with the Catholic League refused at first to recognize Henri of Navarre as their king. These magistrates met in Paris until April 1594. Meanwhile, their royalist colleagues congregated in Tours where, in March 1589, Henri III had transferred his sovereign court. From there, the royalist councillors helped Henri IV reconquer his realm. This, they did in spite of his religion, although they frequently asked him to convert to Catholicism. After the reunification of the two rival courts in April 1594, the parlementaires seemed to work as one and blocked the verification of numerous edicts presented by the king. Their opposition was so strong that it has led some historians to claim that it was endangering the State's survival. It slowly faded away after the verification of the Edict of Nantes in February 1599. In a pacified France, the conflicts between a king finally in control of his realm and his parlementaires became rare. The magistrates finally had confidence in the government which seemed to take adequate measures to stabilize France after more than thirty years of civil wars. / The difficult relationship between Henri IV and the Parlement of Paris between 1589 and 1599 was not created by the egoistic nature of the magistrates or their incompetence as claimed by numerous historians. If some of the Parlementaires--we will call them the "opportunists"--put their own interests before those of the realm, a majority of their colleagues had a very high idea of their political role within France, an idea based on centuries of relation between the kings of France and the Parlement as well as on the political role of the court as defined by theorists of the time. Confronted to a king they hardly knew, these "traditionalists", on whom this work will be centered, tried to make sure that the interests of the kingdom, its king and its inhabitants were protected. They would not give Henri IV's government the leeway it sought but would scrutinize and frequently block the edicts presented to them, and this until Henri IV proved that he could be trusted as the head of the realm.

This Master's thesis belongs to the field of sixteenth century studies. The text I have chosen to study is the Memoires of Marguerite de Valois, begun in 1594 and published in 1628, thirteen years following the death of this queen. My analysis encompasses both the conventions of genre and rhetoric evidenced in the text. The first chapter explores the peculiarities inherent in the memoirs genre, especially where these explicitly distinguish it from the autobiography. The second chapter examines the rhetorical aspects of Marguerite de Valois' Memoires. In doing so, I have highlighted and analyzed the rhetorical strategies employed in the text, whose ultimate intent was to convince the initial reader, Brantome, and subsequently posterity, of the political astuteness of an author who was also worthy of her correspondent's trust as a loyal ally.

No description available.

No description available.

The main aim of this thesis is to examine the vision of history which is presented in the Mémoires of the due de Saint-Simon/ a work which describes life at the French court during the last years of the reign of Louis XIV and during the period of the Regency which followed the death of the Sun King (1691-1723). The thesis is a study based on a close reading of the text itselff using two methods to shed light on the different aspects of the subject. It begins with an investigation of the theme of paternity or fatherhood/ and the way in which this theme relates to the question of royal power/ focusing on the figure of the king himself as he appears in his various father roles: father of both a legitimate and an illegitimate line of children/ and father of his kingdom. The strongly religious and moralistic overtones of Saint-Simon's political and social convictions lead the memorialist to condemn what he sees as the chaos and social disorder resulting from the king's "confusion" of these differing paternal identities. The second half of the thesis is largely a stylistic analysis of two passages taken from the body of the Mémoires. For by examining the style of this work (at both a lexical and a syntactical level)/ one may begin to develop an insight into the way in which Saint-Simon interprets the events of his day in order to fit them into his larger vision of the history of the world. Certain stylistic traits in the text suggest a movement from the mere presentation and explanation of events to an interpretation of their deeper meaning. As well/ frequent references in the Mémoires to both Genesis and Revelations/ taken in conjunction with Saint-Simon's theologo-political view of society/ seem to indicate that the memorialist regards the reign of Louis XIV as being a playing-out/ in miniature/ of the history of the world/ from the Fall to a final confrontation between good and evil. Thus/ in the end/ Saint-Simon's constant need to interpret events leads him away from the simple explanation of causes/ towards the elaboration of a prophetic vision (or "apocalypse") : a dire warning issued to the monarchy and to the people of France as to the fate which may yet befall them, if the process of corruption begun by the Sun King himself is not somehow reversed. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation examines the patronage of Marie de Brabant, queen of France (1260-1322), and how her commissions transformed the atmosphere of the late Capetian court. Bringing with her from her native duchy of Brabant an established set of cultural preferences strikingly different from those that the saintly Louis IX had promoted in Paris for the previous half century, she introduced a love of secular material and elaborate ceremony upon her arrival in 1274. Taking the form of manuscript illumination, sculpture, stained glass, and architecture, as well as literature, music, science, history, genealogy, ritual, and finery, Marie’s patronage set a trend for courtly consumption for the remainder of the medieval period. Nearly always political in nature, her commissions were nonetheless sumptuous to behold, whether secular or sacred in content and they announced her status as Carolingian princess and French queen. Analysis of the frontispiece of Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal Ms. 3142, a richly illuminated miscellany of fictional, historical, and didactic poetry is crucial for understanding Marie’s taste and priorities, and is complemented by study of her other commissions in Brabant and France. These commissions varied from large scale -- such as the addition of chapels to the east end of the church of Notre-Dame in Mantes or window programs for the chapel of St. Nicholas at the church of St.-Nicaise in Reims and her parent’s necropolis at the church of the Dominicans in Louvain -- to smaller format -- the châsse of Ste. Gertrude at Nivelles or the donor statues of the chapelle de Navarre at Mantes. Most numerous, however, are the manuscripts that made up her diverse library which included the secular romances of Adenet le Roi and the scientific treatises of Guillaume de Nangis as well as historical and religious texts all of which were illuminated by the most renowned and creative artists of the day. After an analysis of her patronage as queen and widow, I look to how her activities as patron and collector influenced other late Capetian royal women, many of whom Marie had raised and whose activities, in turn, complemented and complicated their mentor’s vision of queenship. / text