Article ID: CBB001422228

Versailles as a Family Enterprise: The Perraults, 1660--1700 (2013)

unapi

Historians usually treat Versailles as a site of courtly interaction, or as a source for courtly “taste.” This article, however, examines processes that connected Versailles to the wider world, arguing for a model of Versailles's role in the cultural politics of the monarchy, which stresses appropriations by men of letters and supplants “top-down” models of cultural absolutism. It explores the symbolic and material uses of Versailles in the social and intellectual ventures of the Perraults, a family of Parisian men of letters. While acting as authors, members of royal academies, or aides to Colbert, the Perraults used Versailles as a source of exotic animals for scientific dissection, a depository of manuscript texts, a weapon in literary struggles, and a site of sociability. As the Perraults appropriated Versailles, they used their access to the palace for their own devices, unrelated to the goals of a state-run propaganda machine; yet these appropriations brought Louis XIV's grandeur to new publics.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001422228/

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Authors & Contributors
Allocca, Nunzio
Groom, Angelica
Primbault, Simon Dumas
Peter Sahlins
Smolka, Josef
Rabinovitch, Oded
Concepts
Courts and courtiers
Court sponsored science; patronage
Animals
Natural history
Science and culture
Philosophy
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
Qing dynasty (China, 1644-1912)
Early modern
Enlightenment
19th century
Places
France
Paris (France)
Italy
Beijing (China)
England
Prague (Czechia)
Institutions
Académie des Sciences, Paris
Académie Royale des Sciences (France)
Accademia delle Arti del Disegno
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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