Dream of Absolutism
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A01=Hall Bj?rnstad
absolutism
aesthetics
art
Author_Hall Bj?rnstad
Category=DSB
Category=NHD
charles le brun
decorum
delusions grandeur
despotism
dignity
display
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fantasy
france
glory
government
hall of mirrors
history
imagination
jewels
louis xiv
majesty
memoires
monarchy
nonfiction
ostentatious
paintings
politics
power
propaganda
representation
royalty
versailles
wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780226803661
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Oct 2021
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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What was absolutism, and how did it work? What was the function of the ostentatious display surrounding Louis XIV at Versailles? What is gained-and what is lost-by approaching such expressions of absolutism as propaganda, as present-day scholars tend to do?
In this sweeping reconsideration of absolutist culture, Hall Bjornstad argues that the exuberance of Louis XIV's reign was not top-down propaganda in any modern sense, but rather a dream dreamt collectively, by king, court, image-makers, and nation alike. Bjornstad explores this dream through a sustained close analysis of a corpus of absolutist artifacts, ranging from Charles Le Brun's famous paintings in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles via the king's secret Memoires to two little-known particularly extravagant verbal and textual celebrations of the king. The dream of absolutism, Bjornstad concludes, lives at the intersection of politics and aesthetics. It is the carrier of a force that emerges as a glorious image; a participatory emotional reality that requires reality to conform to it. It is a dream, finally, that still shapes our collective political imaginary today.
Hall Bjørnstad is associate professor of French at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he also directs the Renaissance Studies Program. He is the author of a monograph on Blaise Pascal, coeditor of Walter Benjamin’s Hypothetical French Trauerspiel and Universal History and the Making of the Global, and the editor of Borrowed Feathers: Plagiarism and the Limits of Imitation in Early Modern Europe.
