Louis XIV - Couverture rigide

Levi, Anthony

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1841194255 ISBN 13 : 9781841194257

Editeur : Constable, 2004

Synopsis

In his day Louis XIV was monarch of Europe's grandest nation, one of the most politically effective European monarchs ever to reign. Depicted as Apollo, the ancient mythological sun god, he became Le Roi Soleil, invested, throughout his long life, with unprecedented power and privilege. Like Apollo he was equated with all life's finest attributes, with the arts, with music, poetry and elegance. His image reflected the position of France in the 17th century, an exceedingly rich, diverse and powerful culture. He was its magnificent public face, the pinnacle of its glory, for almost 50 years. But he was also a man who was irredeemably flawed and ultimately damaging both to France and its monarchy. At the core of this biography of Louis XIV of France lies the story of the clash between his role as "le Roi Soleil", custodian of the grandeur of France, and his guilt, as a human being, at the effect of his rule on France and its people. It questions too the possibility of training one person to be the symbol of absolute authority without allowing or obliging them to act as the embodiment of that authority. Invested with such power, how did he use it? Was he cruel or kind? Tyrant or populist? What was behind his prodigal expenditure on his own glory? Did he confuse that with that of France? And was it training that led him to do so? In this intricate and controversial biography Anthony Levi shows how Louis XIV ultimately acquitted himself throughout the lengthy and testing role that fate cast him to play in European history.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

A nation exceedingly rich and extraordinarily powerful, its arts unparalleled in elegance and excellence, France in the seventeenth century mirrored the monarch who ruled it: Louis XIV, heritor not only to the throne of his country but also, supposedly, to the powers of the mythological sun god Apollo. Known as le roi soleil—the sun king—and vested with unprecedented power and privilege, for fifty years Louis epitomized the glory that was France. On the dark underside of the monarchy's grand, gilded looking glass, however, lurked peasant starvation, financial bankruptcy, military defeat, and the deaths of thousands—all of which would plague the conscience of the king. It is in the struggle of the lofty sun king, who at least half-believed in his quasi divinity, to reconcile his extravagant persona with the shortcomings, flaws, miscalculations, and failures of an ordinary mortal that the fascination of this new, intricate, and controversial illustrated biography lies. Indeed, at the heart of Anthony Levi's probing study brews the conflict between Louis XIV's regal infallibility and his human, often tragic and far-reaching errors. Out of it emerges a complex personal portrait of one of the most politically effective monarchs ever to reign in Europe.

Biographie de l'auteur

Anthony Levi, a cultural historian and formerly Buchanan Professor of French Language and Literature at the University of St. Andrews, is also the author of Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Constable
• Date d'édition: 2004
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1841194255
• ISBN 13: 9781841194257
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 352
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible