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- Title
Affective Sovereignty in Louis XIII's Royal Ballet.
- Authors
Calhoun, Alison
- Abstract
In early modern France, there was a critical tension between monarchical conduct, the development of Absolutism and a concurrent emergence of what the anglophone world would today call 'emotion'. This article would like to explore this tension from the perspective of performance studies by looking at royal ballet as a form of affective sovereignty. Although royal ballet provided the perfect conditions for kings and their court members to stage sovereignty, under Louis XIII there is an unusual disruption of this view of the ballet as the public transmission of an ideal crown. In an alarming break from ideals of royal dignity, Louis and his fellow dancers surprise the court with their attachment to dance and their affection (and repulsion) for each other, leaving the ballet librettist scrambling to spin the ballet programnes into politically viable expressions of sovereign sentiment.
- Subjects
FRANCE; SOVEREIGNTY; BALLET; DANCE &; politics; FRENCH monarchy -- History; ARISTOCRACY (Political science); LOUIS XIII, King of France, 1601-1643; KINGS &; rulers; HISTORY
- Publication
Nottingham French Studies, 2016, Vol 55, Issue 3, p343
- ISSN
0029-4586
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3366/nfs.2016.0159