The Triumph of Pleasure

Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle

Georgia J. Cowart

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English

University of Chicago Press
20 October 2014

Ballet; Baroque music (c 1600 to c 1750); Opera

Prominent components of Louis XIV's propaganda, the arts of spectacle also became sources of a potent resistance to the monarchy in late seventeenth-century France. With a particular focus on the court ballet, comedy-ballet, opera, and opera-ballet, Georgia J. Cowart tells the long-neglected story of how the festive arts deployed an intricate network of subversive satire to undermine the rhetoric of sovereign authority.

With bold revisionist strokes, Cowart traces this strain of artistic dissent through the comedy-ballets of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Molière, the late operatic works of Lully and the operas of his sons, the opera-ballets of André Campra and his contemporaries, and the related imagery of Antoine Watteau's well-known painting The Pilgrimage to Cythera. She contends that through a variety of means, including the parody of old-fashioned court entertainments, these works reclaimed traditional allegories for new ideological aims, setting the tone for the Enlightenment. Exploring these arts from the perspective of spectacle as it emerged from the court into the Parisian public sphere, Cowart ultimately situates the ballet and related genres as the missing link between an imagery of propaganda and an imagery of political protest.

By: Georgia J. Cowart
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 24mm, Width: 16mm, Spine: 2mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780226211558
ISBN 10: 022621155X
Pages: 324
Publication Date: 20 October 2014
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Georgia J. Cowart is professor of music at Case Western Reserve University.

Reviews for The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle

"""One of the great strengths of Cowart's book is precisely its chronological scope.... Cowart's reach, combined with her considerable erudition and meticulous scholarship, allows her to make some very suggestive parallels between works that might otherwise have passed unnoticed."" (Times Literary Supplement)"""