1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910793597403321

Autore

Gough Melinda

Titolo

Dancing Queen : Marie de Médicis' Ballets at the Court of Henri IV / / Melinda Gough

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto : , : University of Toronto Press, , [2019]

©2019

ISBN

1-4875-1847-1

1-4875-1846-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (395 pages)

Disciplina

944/.031092

Soggetti

Ballet - France - History - 17th century

History

France Court and courtiers History 17th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Intro; Contents; Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Principles of Transcription and Translation; Introduction; Chapter One-Magnificence, Mistresses, and Marie's Dance of Maternity; Peace, Plenty, and the Pleasures of Courtly Pastimes Restored; Franco-Florentine Neoplatonism and the (Medicean) Magnificence of Bourbon Rule; Marie as (Virgin) Mother; Marie's Primitive Accumulation of (Marian) Cultural Capital; Chapter Two-Royal Women's Ballet and/as Royal Ceremonial; Threats to Dynastic Continuity and Images of Joint Rule, 1603-5

The Occasion, the On-stage Action, and the Ballet's Framing as Royal Ceremonial"Pour faire ranger tout le monde"; Casting Choices: "Those Who Could Make her Queen"; Sovereign yet Subject; Ceremonial Expressions of Political Partnership: Abstract Theory, Embodied Practice; Chapter Three-Alliances and Others; Civility's (Islamic) Others; Restoring "the seat of his [Thracian] empire"; Collaboration ... and Contestation; Chapter Four-Eros and "Absolutism"; Marie's Ballet of Diana and her Nymphs: The On-stage Action and Its "Directrice Absolue."

(Dance) Lessons from a Queen: New Bourbon "Methodologies of Authority"Dance and/vs Song: Angelique Paulet and the Limits of



Marie's (Proto)feminism; Eros Channeled to (Sovereign) Virtue: Marie Dances Diana; The April 1609 Ballet de Madame and the Limits of (Patriarchal) Absolutism; Chapter Five-Dances of Diplomacy: London, Valladolid, Paris; Two Queen's Masques, a Sarao, and the Treaty of London, 1604-5; "Hostipitality" at France's 1605 ballet de la reine; A Queen's Ballet, a Queen's Masque, and the Truce of Antwerp, 1609; Conclusion; Appendices; Appendix 1; Appendix 2; Appendix 3; Notes

Sommario/riassunto

"Under glittering lights in the Louvre palace, the French court ballets danced by Queen Marie de Medicis prior to Henri IV's assassination in 1610 attracted thousands of spectators ranging from pickpockets to ambassadors from across Europe. Drawing on newly discovered primary sources as well as theories and methodologies derived from literary studies, political history, musicology, dance studies, and women's and gender studies, Dancing Queen traces how Marie's ballets authorized her incipient political authority through innovative verbal and visual imagery, avant-garde musical developments, and ceremonial arrangements of objects and bodies in space. Making use of women's "semi-official" status as political agents, Marie's ballets also manipulated the subtle social and cultural codes of international courtly society in order to more deftly navigate rivalries and alliances both at home and abroad. At times the queen's productions could challenge Henri IV's immediate interests, contesting the influence enjoyed by his mistresses or giving space to implied critiques of official foreign policy, for example. Such defenses of Marie's own position, though, took shape as part of a larger governmental program designed to promote the French consort queen's political authority not in its own right but as a means of maintaining power for the new Bourbon monarchy in the event of Henri IV's untimely death."--