دوشنبه ۲۶ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۸:۵۷ ۸ بازديد
nated European theatre for much of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The reasons were both
artistic and political. No court could rival that of Louis XIV at Versailles.
No state was as centralised as France and when the Sun King declared, 'I
am the state/ it was not an idle boast. Every monarch and prince in
Continental Europe wanted to be Louis, wanted to have their own
Versailles.
The French state was built on three principles: control, formality and
centralisation. Everything was regulated. Everything, including the arts,
was 'official'. Louis created the Académie française to regulate the
French language and the Comédie-Française to set the standard for the
theatre.
In matters of taste, the court set the tone. Good speech, deportment,
knowledge of etiquette were essential within a hierarchy that was
absolutely fixed. Louis encouraged the arts, notably the theatre. He
himself was a fine dancer and on occasion appeared in one of the
comedie-ballets that were so popular – as Apollo, of course. His reign
witnessed an almost unparalleled flourishing of theatre (Corneille,
Racine, Molière), music (Lully, Charpentier, Marin Marais), painting
(Poussin, Claude), philosophy and mathematics (Descartes, Pascal). It
was also an age of moral reflection, of maxims on the nature of man and,
following Theophrastus, of particular character types (La Bruyere, La
Rochefoucauld). In their salons the
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The reasons were both
artistic and political. No court could rival that of Louis XIV at Versailles.
No state was as centralised as France and when the Sun King declared, 'I
am the state/ it was not an idle boast. Every monarch and prince in
Continental Europe wanted to be Louis, wanted to have their own
Versailles.
The French state was built on three principles: control, formality and
centralisation. Everything was regulated. Everything, including the arts,
was 'official'. Louis created the Académie française to regulate the
French language and the Comédie-Française to set the standard for the
theatre.
In matters of taste, the court set the tone. Good speech, deportment,
knowledge of etiquette were essential within a hierarchy that was
absolutely fixed. Louis encouraged the arts, notably the theatre. He
himself was a fine dancer and on occasion appeared in one of the
comedie-ballets that were so popular – as Apollo, of course. His reign
witnessed an almost unparalleled flourishing of theatre (Corneille,
Racine, Molière), music (Lully, Charpentier, Marin Marais), painting
(Poussin, Claude), philosophy and mathematics (Descartes, Pascal). It
was also an age of moral reflection, of maxims on the nature of man and,
following Theophrastus, of particular character types (La Bruyere, La
Rochefoucauld). In their salons the
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