Abstract
Louis XIV was by no means the first to use the Sun as a symbol — from time immemorial the sun has been taken as a royal emblem. In Renaissance culture, the metaphor of the sun was used to characterize the role of the sovereign and his assembly. In 1537 Jacques Cappel wrote of King Francis I: “You are as the Sun among the planets,”2 and he secularized the mediaeval Topos of the divine court of God, transforming it into a royal court on earth. Henry IV was the first “Sun King,” and indeed in 1610 the president of the Parlement, de Harlay, said in his address to the newly-crowned young monarch that: “There is not a loss of that great sun, but rather an eclipse of it whereby its light, no sooner obscured in one place, appears in another.”3 These metaphors of phoenix and sun4 served to illustrate the transition of power after Henry IV’s death: the king’s demise was shown in the clouds that dimmed the brightness of the sun, but that sun would shine once more, in the shape of Louis XIII.
Allegory is the most ancient device for expressing thought through the written word. Writing came into use long after the Egyptians left their mysterious figures as evidence of their religion and laws of state. Poets since that time, through the use of allegorical meaning, metamorphosis and fable, have handed down to us the finest precepts and most valuable lessons in philosophy [...]. And in the end, however little we may know of the poets themselves, we can understand their subject matter with no difficulty; for allegory, far from obscuring their ideas, enlightens and enriches them [...]Mercure galant, 16841
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Mercure galant, 1684, pp. 3–9, quoted in G. Sabatier, “Le Parti figuratif à Versailles,” XVIIe Siècle (1988), p. 419.
For Cappel’s speech, see A. N. P 2306 [Le Maistre], fols. 353v–369v (15th January 1537); quoted in Sarah Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 90.
Dupuy, Traité de la majorité [Reg. du Pari.], pp. 467–69; quoted in S. Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 231.
Louis XIII was named the “petit phénix” and Sol Franciae in 1611; see S. Hanley The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983) p. 264.
“The theme of a Pythian Apollo […] was used to glorify the triumphant victory of the monarch over the pernicious forces of the opposition” — F. Bardon, Le Portrait mythologique à la Cour de France sous Henri IV et Louis XIII (Paris: Éd. Picard, 1974). This is a recurrent theme in royal imagery.
Louis XIV, Mémoires et divers écrits (Paris: Club du Livre, 1960), pp. 124–25.
N. Ferrier-Caverivière, L’Image de Louis XIV dans la littérature française de 1660 à 1715 (Paris: PUF, 1981), p. 76.
Le Moyne, De l’Art de régner (Paris, 1665), p. 45.
J. Jehasse, “Guez de Balzac et Corneille face au mythe romain,” in Pierre Corneille, Actes du colloque tenu à Rouen du 2 au 6 octobre 1984 (Paris: PUF, 1985), p. 249.
L. Marin, Le Portrait du roi (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1981), pp. 9 and 10. Marin points out that “représenter” means both “to present again” (in the time sense) and “in the place of, speaking spatially.
P. Ricœur, La Métaphore vive (Paris: Seuil, 1975), p. 11.
Ronsard, quoted in T. Murray, “Richelieu’s Theater: The Mirror of a Prince,” Renaissance Drama 1977, p. 276. Ronsard wrote in Fin pour une comédie: “La Comédie apparaît un exemple/ Où chacun de son fait les actions contemple:/ Le monde est le théâtre, et les hommes acteurs.”
The first definition that Furetière gives of virtue is “the power of action inherent in all natural bodies, according to their qualities or properties”. Corneille uses the famous mediaeval square of the cardinal virtues: justice, prudence, temperance and courage.
A. Stegmann itemizes the political treatises published in France from 1600 to 1648 under several headings: sociology of the authors, from first principles to the mechanism of institutions, conflict of values, dialectics of values, in “Les Traités politiques en France (1600–1648): entre le juridique et le moral,” Cahiers de Littérature du XVIIe siècle, 9 (Toulouse, 1987), pp. 77–109. For the education of Louis XIV, please see the following works: Gomberville’s Discours des mœurs, Vauquelin des Yvetaux’s Instruction du prince, Arnauld d’Andilly’s Mémoires pour un souverain, and the various treatises by La Mothe le Vayer. All these texts deal exclusively with the greatness of the king.
The virtues of magnanimity and of magnificence are inseparable and are synonymous with the French virtue of generosity. See M. Fumaroli in the discussion of J. Rohou’s paper, “La Fronde et la vision de l’homme de la ‘générosité’ à l’avidité” in La Fronde en question, Actes du 18e colloque du CMR 17 (Aix-en-Provence, 1988), p. 381.
Marmontel, Éléments de littérature IV, p. 154, quoted in C. Girdlestone, La Tragédie en musique (1673–1750) considérée comme genre littéraire (Paris: Droz, 1972).
It is worth noting that it was in July 1527 that the registers of the Parlement first call the Lit de justice the “royal throne”. The word “throne” had until that time meant not the royal seat itself but the Grand’ Chambre as a whole, or indeed the larger spatial complex where the king and Parlement met. See S. Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983) p. 61.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XII, 11. 39–45: “There is a place in the middle of the world, ‘twixt land and sea and sky, the meeting-point of the three-fold universe. From this place, whatever is, however far away, is seen, and every word penetrates to these hollow ears” — Frank Justus Miller, translator (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1984).
“La Toison d’or, tragédie en machines de M. Corneille l’aîné, représentée sur le théâtre royal des seuls comédiens du roi entretenus par Sa Majesté en leur hôtel, rue de Guénégaud. Avec un prologue nouveau. Entreprise sous la conduite du sieur Du Fort, Paris, impr. de Vve G. Adam, 1683, 35 p.” The Desseins of 1683 read as follows: “Tandis qu’Aæte se plaint de la perfidie de sa fille, Junon paraît dans son Char pour remonter au Ciel, presque en même temps le Ciel s’ouvre et fait paraître le palais du Soleil au-dessus du Phase. Le Soleil paraît tout éclatant de lumière et s’avance du côté des spectateurs, en s’élevant insensiblement comme pour parler à Jupiter, dont le palais au-dessus de ce Soleil s’ouvre aussi quelques moments après de sorte que ces deux Palais tout brillants se font voir au-dessus de la forêt de Mars, et forment trois théâtres qui font un spectacle imitant le mouvement des Planètes, après s’être avancé vers les spectateurs, s’élève et traverse le palais de Jupiter, au-dessus duquel il s’arrête un moment, revient ensuite dans sa première place où il semble s’augmenter, et s’agrandissant tout d’un coup, il se fait voir une fois plus large qu’il n’était; il disparaît ensuite en s’abaissant pour fondre dans la mer, et celui de Jupiter en remontant dans le ciel finit tout ce grand spectacle.”h
The Gazette de France, the Mercure galant and the Journal des Savants ail report the military exploits of Louis XIV. In 1663 the king founded the Petite Académie (for the study of the arts and humanities), in 1662 the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, in 1671 the Academy of Architecture, followed by the Royal Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Academy of Music. In 1672, after Séguier’s death, he became the patron of the Académie française.
G. Ferreyrolles, Pascal et la raison du politique (Paris: PUF, 1984), p. 18: “It has become impossible to express any form of criticism which does not attack the king directly: the minister is no longer there to serve as a scapegoat, and it would be unthinkable to find fault with the Prince. In matters of state, we shall have to settle for philosophizing on the education of the dauphin.”
Le Moyne, De l’Art de régner (Paris, 1665), p. 46.
Louis Marin’s remarks support Père Le Moyne’s reflections: “The Court has become the great new theatre: the whole political arena has been transformed by this aesthetic shift towards the theatrical. The Court at home and the war abroad now constitute the new scenes of action. For the monarch in the ‘theatre-come-true’ of his Court, there can be no theatre of politics [la politique], and even less of political topics [le politique], since politics and the political side of things have themselves become theatre,” in “Théâtralité et politique au XVIIe siècle: sur trois textes de Corneille,” La France et l’Italie au temps de Mazarin, texts selected and published by Jean Serroy (Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1986), p. 404.
Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957). The ambiguity expressed by the maxim le roi ne meurt jamais (the king never dies) tended to blur the distinction between the king’s two bodies (the person and his function).
Paul Ricœur, La Métaphore vive, p. 209: in metaphor in praesentia, “the two terms are present together, as well as the mark of their partial identity”.
Bouhours, “Les Devises, sixième entretien,” Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène (Paris: Bibliothèque de Cluny, 1962, reprint of first edition of 1671), p. 178.
Nietzsche, Le Livre du philosophe/Das Philosophenbuch, p. 183; quoted in C. Normand, Métaphore et concept (Paris: PUF (Dialectiques), 1976), p. 24: according to Nietzsche, “truths are illusions whose illusory nature we have forgotten, metaphors which have worn through and lost their sensual power, coins on which the effigy has been rubbed away and which are now only of interest as pieces of metal”.
Ricœur, p. 209: in metaphor in absentia (“true metaphor according to the Ancients”), “the substitutable term is absent from the discourse”.
The Greek word aenigma “certainly evokes the idea of obscurity, but also the even more intangible idea of a representation of an image, indeed of a narrative” — J.-F. Groulier, “Monde symbolique et crise de la figure hiéroglyphique dans l’oeuvre du Père Ménestrier,” XVIIe siècle 158, 1988, p. 101.
Ménestrier, L’Art des emblèmes (Paris: La Caille, 1684), p. 33. Éloges et Discours sur la Triomphante réception du Roi en sa ville de Paris …, A Paris, chez Pierre Récolet, 1629 (Arsenal Ra4 233), page 77 reads: “That very ship is France whose people are the most war-like living today: her captains and soldiers are so many Heroes and Argonauts: but the King is her Jason, who by his valour and wisdom, like another Minerva, stands at the helm of this great monarchy, guiding her to the contentment of peace, and to the fatal fleece which is the love of his people and the union of his subjects.” The king so described is undoubtedly Louis XIII.
C. Normand, op. cit., p. 8.
Abbé O. F. de Bianville, Symbole héroïque pour les dernières conquêtes du roi (Paris, 1688), p. 100.
N. Ferrier-Caverivière, , L’Image de Louis XIV dans la littérature française de 1660 à 1715 (Paris: PUF, 1981), p. 100.
La Toison d’or, tragedy with stage effects by Monsieur Corneille the elder, performed in the royal theatre by the king’s own actors entertained by His Majesty in their private residence, Rue de Guénégaud. With a new prologue. Under the management of the Sieur Du Fort, Paris, at the printing house of Widow G. Adam, 1683, 35 pp. The Desseins of 1683 read as follows: “As Aaetes complains of his daughter’s perfidy, Juno appears in her Chariot and ascends into the Heavens, and at the same moment the Heavens open to show the palace of the Sun over the River Phasis. The Sun radiates light and moves towards the audience, rising gradually as though to speak to Jupiter, whose palace above this Sun also opens a few moments later, so that the two glittering Palaces are displayed above the forest of Mars, forming three sets which create a marvellous spectacle imitating the movement of the Planets. The Sun, after journeying towards the audience, rises up and crosses Jupiter’s palace, above which he stops for a moment, then returns to his original position where he seems to grow ever larger, doubling his size. Then he disappears, sinking down as though into the sea, and Jupiter concludes the display, as his palace rises into the heavens.”
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wagner, MF. (1994). Les Conquêtes de la Toison D’or of 1661 and 1683. In: Kronegger, M., Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Allegory Old and New. Analecta Husserliana, vol 42. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1946-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1946-7_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-011-7649-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-1946-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive