Death and the Crown: Ritual and Politics in France Before the Revolution (Studies in Modern French and Francophone History)

Anne Byrne

ISBN 10: 1526143305 / ISBN 13: 9781526143303

Published by Manchester University Press, 2020

About this Item

Hardcover, xii + 249 pages, b&w illustrations in text, NOT ex-library. Book is clean and bright with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Minor handling wear only. Issued without a dust jacket. -- This study examines how royal ceremonial functioned as a site of political contestation in late ancien regime France. The analysis centres on a concentrated period of ritual activity following the death of Louis XV in 1774: the king's deathbed and funeral, the lit de justice of November 1774 in which the newly ascended Louis XVI restored the parlements suppressed by Chancellor Maupeou three years earlier, and the sacre at Reims in June 1775. By focusing on this cluster of ceremonies, the book reveals how ritual was not merely decorative or passively traditional but actively deployed, manipulated and contested by competing political actors - the crown, the parlements, the clergy, pamphleteers and the broader public. A central argument is that the Maupeou crisis of 1771, in which the existing parlements were dissolved and replaced, fundamentally destabilised the ceremonial order. Every ritual that followed was shaped by the unresolved tensions of that constitutional rupture. The funeral of Louis XV, the restoration of the magistrates and the coronation of his successor all became occasions on which legitimacy had to be publicly re-established - or could be publicly challenged. The book draws on a wide range of sources including official accounts, memoirs, pamphlet literature, visual material and archival records. It engages with historiographical debates on political culture, desacralisation and the origins of the Revolution, contributing to a growing body of scholarship that takes seriously the political work performed by ceremony in early modern and eighteenth-century France. Of particular interest to scholars of pre-revolutionary French political culture, the history of monarchy and the relationship between ritual, legitimacy and public opinion.

Seller Inventory # 013358

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Death and the Crown: Ritual and Politics in France Before the Revolution (Studies in Modern French and Francophone History)
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1526143305
• ISBN 13: 9781526143303
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Looking at royal ritual in pre-revolutionary France, Death and the crown examines the deathbed and funeral of Louis XV in 1774, the lit de justice of November 1774 and the coronation of Louis XVI, including the ceremony of the royal healing touch for scrofula. It reviews the state of the field in ritual studies and appraises the situation of the monarchy in the 1770s, including the recall of the parlements and the many ways people engaged with royal ritual. It answers questions such as whether Louis XV died in fear of damnation, why Marie Antoinette was not crowned in 1775 and why Louis XVI's coronation was not held in Paris. This lively, accessible text is a useful tool for undergraduate and postgraduate teaching which will also be of interest to specialists on this under-researched period.

About the Author

Anne Byrne is a former British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, now Honorary Research Fellow, at Birkbeck, University of London