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The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV & the Politics of Spectacle
Contributor(s): Cowart, Georgia J. (Author)
ISBN: 022621155X     ISBN-13: 9780226211558
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
OUR PRICE:   $47.52  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: October 2014
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Music | Genres & Styles - Opera
- Music | History & Criticism - General
- Music | Genres & Styles - Ballet
Dewey: 780.944
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" (1.00 lbs) 324 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - French
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
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 Moli re, the late operatic works of Lully and the operas of his sons, the opera-ballets of Andr 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.


Contributor Bio(s): Cowart, Georgia J.: - Georgia J. Cowart is professor of music at Case Western Reserve University.