Classical Identities: The Power of Word and Image

3 units

We will study a variety of texts and images that show how 17th-century France not only documented its own glory but also its power to invent and control identities. The term identities here refers both to the reputation of individuals at court, including most prominently the king himself, and to the characteristics of things in the world as they are depicted by literary authors, artists, and scientists. What writers and artists have in common is that the apparent realism of their descriptions cannot entirely conceal the very spectacular performance of courtly ambition, the play of appearances and fabricated identities that shapes the classical world. We will examine how the reality presented in texts and images is as much a product of a cultivated fiction as the unearthing of facts. Texts to include fairy tales by d'Aulnoy and Perrault; Corneille, Medee and L'Illusion Comique; Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire; Racine, Britannicus; Lafayette, La Princesse de Cleves; entries in Furetière's Dictionnaire Universel; and the autobiographical testimony of scientists like Descartes who write to defend their discoveries and inventions. Images to include portraits, almanacs (calendars decorated with commemorative images), and maps.