Le jeu a joué bien des tours à Montherlant, si l’on en croit les jugements proférés à l’encontre d’un auteur accusé de cacher son jeu et de duper son lectorat. Le personnage Montherlant continue à éclipser une œuvre multiforme, s’étalant sur une cinquantaine d’années. Mais la part du jeu dans l’élaboration de l’image de l’écrivain ne peut être envisagée indépendamment de la vision des pratiques ludiques qui émane de ses écrits. L’étude du jeu dans l’ensemble de l’œuvre, y compris dans le paratexte envahissant qui l’accompagne, offre un angle d’approche privilégié pour dépassionner notre rapport à l’auteur et interroger l’inactualité supposée de son œuvre. Ce travail de contextualisation, qui invite à faire dialoguer les écrits de ce polygraphe avec ceux d’autres auteurs, mobilise des outils historiques et sociologiques, à même d’éclairer la conception du jeu de l’écrivain. Notion malléable que l’auteur interprète à l’aune de ses expériences sportives et tauromachiques, le jeu se présente comme un espace initiatique. Revendiquant son appartenance au milieu nobiliaire, Montherlant s’érige en arbitre du goût. S’ils se conforment pour une part à une logique aristocratique, les choix de cet homme de loisir déjouent parfois les attentes du lecteur. Le ludisme existentiel qu’affiche l’auteur informe non seulement ses pratiques d’écriture mais aussi sa conception du rôle de l’écrivain, laquelle révèle toute sa fragilité durant la période de l’Occupation. Rendre compte de l’impact du jeu sur la réception de l’œuvre conduit ainsi à faire apparaître les failles des stratégies adoptées par l’auteur, failles dans lesquelles s’engouffrent parfois la critique et les lecteurs. / Many a time has play fooled Montherlant if we are to believe comments accusing the author of hiding his hand and deceiving his readers. Montherlant’s character continues to overshadow his protean works which span approximately fifty years. However, the playful construction of the writer’s image cannot be separated from the aspect of play stemming from his texts. Studying the element of play in his works as a whole, including the overwhelming paratext which accompanies them, offers a privileged point of view and allows us to take the heat out of our relationship to the author and question the assumed obsolescence of his works. This effort of contextualisation, which invites us to put the texts of this versatile writer in relation to those of other authors, draws on historical and sociological tools allowing us to shed light on the writer’s conception of play. Play, a malleable term which the author construes in the light of his own athletic and bullfighting experiences, presents itself as an initiatory space. Montherlant asserts his aristocratic background and sets himself up as an arbiter of taste. If his choices are partly induced by an aristocratic logic, they sometimes deceive the reader’s expectations. The existential playfulness asserted by the author not only influences his way of writing but his conception of the writer’s role as well, a role whose weakness has been revealed to the full during the Occupation. Studying the impact of play on the reception of his works hereby leads us to unveil the flaws of the strategies adopted by the author, flaws in which critics and readers are sometimes swallowed up.

This thesis examines the portraiture and patronage of Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan, the princesse de Lamballe (1749-1792). It is the first comprehensive and detailed study to be undertaken of the princess's activities as patron. Lamballe was Marie-Antoinette's longest-serving confidante and Superintendent of the Queen's Household. Through close formal analysis of the portraits combined with careful consideration of the sitter's personal circumstances and the wider cultural and historical context, the thesis challenges scholarly assumptions that the princess had only negligible influence as a sitter and patron. As a case study of an independent, professionally ambitious and childless widow, it identifies a wider range of motives and cultural meanings than has previously been ascribed to female court patronage of this period. The first chapter demonstrates that the early depictions of Lamballe as a docile and grieving princess were largely dictated by her father-in-law, an identity the princess subsequently discarded when she assumed a professional role at court. Chapter two examines portraits executed during the princess's rise to political and social prominence and shows that her attachment to the queen and the length of time she spent in her company and service, together with her publicly visible roles as freemason and salonnière, made her a figure of considerable renown and influence and thereby a highly significant patron at the French court. This was enhanced by the princess's international reputation as a talented amateur artist in her own right and by her financial and social support of aspiring artists and art institutions. The princess's engagement with the cult of sentiment and advocacy of women artists is allied to the sorority encouraged by Marie-Antoinette within the women of her select circle. Complementary chapters on the princess's previously unknown anglophile inclinations (discussed in Chapter three) and her private collections, library, and musical and literary patronage (considered in Chapter four) further reveal that Lamballe was an informed and cultivated female patron who operated at the very centre of Marie-Antoinette's circle.

Dissertation abstract This dissertation deals with the lowest segment of administration in Bohemia - regional offices - with respect to their personnel staffing in 1537-1848. The chronological limits of the work were determined by surviving archival sources of the central institutions and printed calenders and "schematizations" which enabled, with exceptions of a part of problematic years of the Thirty Years'War, to compile the line of the regional governors in this period. The first two chapters briefly discuss the development of the regions and regional governors'duties, and in this way delimit the frames of their activities in the society. The next two chapters form the basis of the study. They are focused on the participation of nobility in the administration of the regions in chronological order. Firstly, the share of the high nobility and particulary aristocracy within in holding the office is observed, dividing the period into three parts, first the period before the White Mountain Bettle, the second within the years 1631-1713 and last is limited by the years of the regions'reforms in 1714 and 1751. The reason for adopting the chronological division was the used method which enabled to specify the biggest land possesors in the regions after the White Mountain period and to clarify the involment of...

The presented diploma thesis is dealing with the life of Katerina Hradecká of Montfort, noble foreigner, married to Adam II. of Hradec. The author is using older as well as more recent literature, written, tangible and iconographic sources to analyze, based on historical-anthropological methods, transformation of the inner world of the noblewoman. She is firstly introduced as a maid of honor in the hofstadt of archduchess Maria of Bavaria in Graz. Author also looks into her marriage to Adam II. of Hradec, investigating it within political and religious context of that period, as it was associated with the connections of the lords of Hradec to the House of Habsburg. Author also pays attention to the noblewoman as a wife, a mother, a Jesuit confidant, a widow and a strict catholic, that had a substantial influence on the social life of Hradec and its surroundings due to her religious views. Author does not omit the tangible cultural aspects connected with the activities of Katerina Hradecka of Montfort and her impact on the ecclesiastical and secular architecture in Jindřichův Hradec.

The aristocratic novel in the twentieth century depicts the successes and failures of the aristocracy's efforts to come to terms with the social realities brought about by contemporary egalitarianism. Although several of the novels discussed are written by aristocrats, the aristocratic novel as such refers to novels about the aristocracy as a social grouping. Seven authors are selected to represent fictional treatment of a class in crisis, struggling between decadence and resilience: V. Sackville-West, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford, Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, L.P. Hartley and Emma Tennant. Sackville-West faces and chronicles the inevitable decay of her class, yet cannot refrain from mourning its gracious past. To her, the manor house symbolizes an ancient idyllic symbiosis between aristocrat and worker. To Evelyn Waugh, the aristocracy embodies the finest achievements of inherited English culture. He regards its decline as the crumbling of Christian civilization itself. Resilience against the rising proletariate lies in faith and a chivalrous other-worldliness associated with the old Catholic aristocracy. Mitford uses comedy to defend the ideals of service and honour which she sees undermined by vulgarity and mercantilism. She resists her opponents with lethal swipes of raillery. Bowen and Keane deal with the decline of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy. The heirs of the ascendancy have to cope with the paralysing bequest of a more vital past. Ironically, resilience lies in breaking with their heritage. Hartley appears to criticize the class structure, but his work reveals a fascination for the captivating myth of patrician life. Tennant, representing an aristocracy which has profited from the resurgence of wealth in Thatcherite Britain, is unsparingly caustic on the condition of her class. Her satiric writing presents an ethical resurgence that goes beyond the mere financial recovery of her society. The genre examined suggests a primal need among urbanized citizens for the myth of an heroic order. In the finest aristocratic novels, admiration for an imitable superior order is used to rally a consciousness of a venerable ethical establishment. What is threatened or lost is not merely wealth and privilege, but aristokratos - government by the best. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

Au prisme des caricatures que ses détracteurs en ont faites dès la Restauration, parées après les « Trois Glorieuses » des couleurs de la vérité, la cour des Bourbons de France serait à la fois nulle, anachronique et ridicule. Cette condamnation rétrospective empêche d'appréhender la centralité des institutions domestiques et de la société curiale dans la France de 1814 à 1830. Instrument de légitimation du principe héréditaire incarné par la dynastie régnante, vecteur d'exaltation de sa prééminence et de mise en scène d'une royauté sacrale, la cour de la Restauration se doit d'être étudiée d'un point de vue internaliste, qui en retrace la généalogie, les modalités de recréation et les logiques de structuration. Si elle reproduit les règles de fonctionnement identifiées par Norbert Elias comme caractéristiques de l'Ancien Régime, la société de cour restaurée s'en distingue par la prépondérance, dans l'intime familiarité des Bourbons, de fidèles purs. « Arche sainte de la légitimité » et sanctuaire des traditions royales, foyer d'oppositions anti-ministérielles et d'une résistance, couronnée de succès, à l'ordonnance de réforme du 1er novembre 1820, destinée à la « nationaliser », elle cristallise l'assimilation des courtisans à une coterie irrémédiablement étrangère au peuple de France et contraire à ses libertés. Désavouée, en 1844, par le prétendant légitimiste, la cour de la Restauration est liquidée dès 1830 par le roi des Français, rapidement contraint, cependant, de renouer avec certains de ses héritages en curialisant la monarchie de Juillet. / According to the caricatures its detractors produced from the time of the Restoration onwards, adorned with the colours of truth after "the Three Glorious" Days, the Bourbon Court of France would be nothing but anachronistic and ridiculous. This retrospective condemnation prevents from understanding the centrality of Royal Households and Court society in France between 1814 and 1830. As a means to legitimize the hereditary principle embodied by the ruling dynasty, glorify their prominence and stage the scenario of a sacred monarchy, the Restoration Court must be approached from an inner view which traces its roots, the terms of its recreation and its structuring logics. Although it replicates the rules defined by Norbert Elias as typical of the Old Regime, the restored Court society differs from them by the predominancy of courtiers depicted as pure followers within the close intimacy of the Bourbons. An « Ark of legitimacy », a sanctuary of royal traditions, and a center of oppositions to governments, the Court overcame its nationalization through the reform of November 1820, but hastened the assimilation of the courtiers into a coterie, irretrievably alien to the people of France and hostile to liberties. Disavowed by the legitimist pretender to the throne, the Restoration Court was liquidated as early as the year 1830 by the King of the French, who nevertheless had to quickly come to terms with some its legacies so as to create the national Court of the July Monarchy.

The dissertation inquires into the participation of the historic aristocracy in the agency of the Society of the patriotic friends of arts and the Association of fine arts. On the basis of an analysis of the annual reports of both of the institutions a survey of selected aristocratic contributors and donators of works of art will be made. In addition to this, the dissertation focuses on several of the more or less noted aristocratic members of the named institutions. In this respect a form of their interest in collecting of artworks and in art patronage, shortly {--} in their virtu, will also be partly dealt with. As an introduction to the subject the survey is preceded by a text dealing with even earlier activities concerning art patronage and art collections that occured in the region of the Czech kingdom and also the Margraviate of Moravia.

Cette étude analyse la place et le rôle du mode de vie dans les discours et les pratiques politiques à Rome à la fin du IIIe siècle av. J.-C. et au IIe siècle av. J.-C. qui formaient un moment charnière. Le luxe faisait partie des pratiques de distinction de l’aristocratie à la fin du IVe siècle av. J. C. et au IIIe siècle av. J. C. À partir de la deuxième guerre punique, l’élite commença à s’inquiéter du rôle politique du faste et des menaces qu’il faisait peser sur le système oligarchique ; elle fit ensuite voter des lois régulant les festins pour éviter que ceux-ci ne servissent à gagner du crédit politique, mais sans évoquer franchement cette raison, par déférence pour le pouvoir et par souci de préserver sa légitimité. Le combat contre le luxe investit les discours, influant sur l’image que l’élite donnait d’elle-même. Les adversaires du luxe, comme Caton l’Ancien, mirent en avant une nouvelle qualité, la frugalité, correspondant à l’adoption d’un train de vie inférieur à ce que son rang permettait. Une représentation négative se structura autour du luxe, explicitement et définitivement associé aux vices, aux étrangers, en particulier aux Grecs, et implicitement considéré comme caractéristique des hommes inaptes à servir leur patrie ou aspirant à un pouvoir excessif. Une représentation antithétique se développa autour de la frugalité, qualité des vrais Romains fidèles aux mœurs de la campagne et soucieux des intérêts de la République, une image qui fut particulièrement appréciée par le peuple. Ces arguments connurent un immense succès dans les luttes politiques du dernier tiers du IIe siècle av. J. C. La frugalité était cependant difficilement applicable en toutes circonstances car elle heurtait les normes de l’élite : il importait de signifier à travers elle une position politique, mais il fallait aussi savoir recevoir convenablement ses amis. Le stoïcisme, qui se développait alors à Rome et qui prescrivait une vie tempérante, dut s’adapter à cette exigence. / This study analyses the place and role of the way of life in political speeches and practices in Rome in the late third century BC and in the second century BC, which formed a turning point. Luxury was a means of social distinction for the aristocracy in the late fourth century BC and third century BC. From the Second Punic War onwards, the elite began to worry about the political impact of this sumptuousness and the threats it posed for the oligarchic system. Consequently, the elite introduced laws regulating banquets in order to prevent hosts from gaining political prestige, without clearly citing this reason, out of deference for the government and in order to protect its own legitimacy. This fight against luxury spread in speeches and influenced the image of itself which the elite wanted to promote. The detractors of luxury, like Cato the Elder, proposed a new ideal – frugality, which implied adopting a lifestyle more humble than that which was allowed by one’s actual rank. A negative definition of luxury was proposed – it was explicitly and definitively associated with vice, foreigners (Greeks especially), and implicitly considered to be typical of men who were unable to serve their homeland or who aspired to excessive power. An antithetic representation of frugality was developed and was thought to be the quality of real Romans who were true to the values of the countryside and anxious to preserve the interests of the Republic. This image was highly valued by the people. These ideas played a significant role in the power struggles in the last third of the second century BC. Frugality remained nonetheless a difficult quality to adopt in all circumstances because it went against the standards of the elite – while it mattered for the elite to make their political position clear through frugality, it was also important to cater to one’s guests as befitted one’s rank. Stoicism, which was then developing in Rome and advocated a restrained way of life, had to adapt to this demand.

Au cours des dernières décennies, la recherche sur l’aristocratie romaine s’est largement diversifiée en s’ouvrant, au-delà des aspects politiques et prosopographiques bien défrichés, à de nouvelles problématiques telles que les formes de communication des élites, la sémiologie du pouvoir ou encore les rapports entre les pratiques politiques et l’espace. La thèse s’insère dans ces nouvelles approches et y apporte une importante innovation : si l’espace de la vie aristocratique a longtemps été conçu de façon dichotomique entre urbs et rus, entre domus et uilla, le travail proposé démontre la pertinence d’un troisième espace trop longtemps négligé par la recherche, les horti résidentiels de Rome. L’étude des jardins en tant que résidences aristocratiques, situées dans des espaces verdoyants en dehors et en même temps très proches de la ville, permet de remplacer la dichotomie domus-uilla par le triptyque domus-horti-uilla, de découvrir un cadre peu connu de l’action politique, ainsi que les conditions et potentialités des interactions spécifiques à ce troisième lieu de résidence. L’étude des horti s’appuie essentiellement sur une analyse systématique de l’ensemble des sources littéraires ; elle prend en compte les données archéologiques lorsqu'elles sont conservées et disponibles. L'étude de l'historiographie des jardins est le préalable de la conceptualisation de l'objet de recherche. / In the last few decades, research on Roman aristocracy has been largely diversified by extending its scope, over and beyond well-known political and prosopographical aspects, to new issues such as the forms of communication of the elite, the semiology of power, or the relation between political practices and space. This PhD follows these paths and introduces an important innovation: if the space of the aristocratic life has long been considered as a dichotomy between urbs and rus, between domus and uilla, the present work demonstrates the relevance of a third place long neglected by researchers,the residential horti of Rome. The study of gardens as aristocratic residences, located in green spaces outside of the city and at the same time very close to it, allows for the replacement of traditional domus-uilla dichotomy by the domus-horti-uilla triptych and leads to the discovery a little known place of political action along with the conditions and potential for interaction proper to this third place of residence. The study of horti is based primarily on a systematic analysis of numerous literarysources; it takes into account archaeological data wherever available. The study of garden historiography is a preliminary to the conceptualization of this study.

Ondřej Podavka Zdeněk Brtnický of Waldstein and his diary from the years 1597−1603 (Abstract) The subject of the doctoral thesis is an in many aspects noteworthy personality of Moravian aristocrat Zdeněk Brtnický of Waldstein, one of the 30 directors in the era of rebellion of the estates. The dissertation focuses chiefly on the period of his and pre-university and university studies, for which the largest amount of the sources has been preserved, primarily his voluminous personal diary. Zdeněk Brtnický of Waldstein was born on 12 May 1582. In his very childhood he became an orphan - his father Henry Brtnický of Waldstein and on Sádek died already in 1589, followed by his wife and Zdeněk's mother Susanne Helt of Kement three years later. First place where Waldstein is known to have studied, is Lutheran noblemen's school in Velké Meziříčí, which was founded by Waldstein's grandmother Alena Helt of Kement, born Meziříčská of Lomnice. From 1592 to 1594 he studied in Jihlava, then he studied in Brzeg in Silesia for other two years and in the summer 1596, equipped with good Latin education, he moved on to Strasbourg, where he stayed for three years and attended academy. In the years 1599 he set out on the grand tour through the western and southern Europe. Having first stayed for a few weeks in Paris, he...