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Performative Polemic offers a literary history of the French-language pamphlets that denounced absolutism during Louis XIV’s personal reign (1661-1715). The book employs performativity as a conceptual framework to trace the evolution of anti-absolutist pamphlets from legalistic texts indicting the French crown to satirical narratives that transformed the Sun King into a laughable object of derision.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Translations
Introduction An Army of Authors
Chapter 1 Performing Justice: Lisola's Bouclier d'état et de justice (1667)
Chapter 2 Moving Speech: Performing Memory in Le Miroir des princes (1684)
Chapter 3 Failure to Perform? Scripting Reform in Les Soupirs de la France esclave (1689-90)
Chapter 4 Comedy of Erring: Performance in the Underworld in L'Alcoran de Louis XIV (1695)
Chapter 5 Unbecoming Majesty: Performing Impotence in the Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696)
Epilogue The King is Dead, Long Live Dissent
Notes
Bibliography
About the author
KATHRINA LAPORTA is a lecturer in the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University.
Summary
Analyses the "war of words" unleashed in the pamphlets denouncing Louis XIV's absolute monarchy between 1667 and 1715. The book investigates how pamphlet writers challenged the monarchy's monopoly over the performance of sovereignty by contesting the very mechanisms through which the crown legitimized its authority.
