Title: Subject and Ceremony: Racine's Royalist Rhetoric
Abstract: Jean Racine was inaugurated into the august company of the Academie Francaise early in 1673, at the unusually young age of 34. As had become customary, the reception of a new member was the center of an elaborate ceremony at which the inductee and the current director of the Academy each displayed their rhetorical skills in a speech of praise. This particular ceremony was leant even greater lustre by the presence, for the first time, of Colbert, the most powerful minister of the still-young king Louis XIV. Indeed, Colbert's presence was merely one signal of greatly increased royal interest in the Academy, of which the highpoint had been the recent assumption of the office of Protector by the most illustrious of all possible sponsors, Louis himself.' Racine, young but already renowned for his tragedies, came to this occasion with an opportunity to shine in the eyes of the best and the brightest of his contemporaries, not just from the world of letters, but from the more important world of the court. His appearance was an utter failure. He read his speech in a hushed monotone that did not reach the ears of his auditors, displeasing his patron Colbert and making them both the object of a certain
Publication Year: 1985
Publication Date: 1985-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 15
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot