The Contested Parterre: Public Theater and French Political Culture, 1680–1791

Jeffrey S. Ravel

Published by Cornell University Press 1999

The Contested Parterre

Public Theater and French Political Culture, 1680–1791

Jeffrey S. Ravel

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501724626

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the playhouses of eighteenth-century France, clerks and students, soldiers and merchants, and the occasional aristocrat stood in the pit, while the majority of the elite sat in loges. These denizens of the parterre, who accounted for up to...

Author / Editor information

Jeffrey S. Ravel is Associate Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

Sarah Maza, Northwestern University:

The Contested Parterre is an absorbing, vivid, and often very funny account of usually unsuccessful attempts to control the boisterous public standing in the pits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Parisian theatres. In departing from current views of the 'public sphere' as grounded principally in the print medium, Jeffrey Ravel's work also represents a major conceptual challenge to established understandings of eighteenth-century cultural politics.

Andre Spies, Hollins University:

Jeffrey Ravel's The Contested Parterre is a work of considerable merit, worthy of a place among the histories of French cultural politics produced in recent decades by Cornell University Press, the most prominent publisher in the field. The book is beautifully turned out. The scholarly apparatus is impressive, and footnotes make it particularly user-friendly.

Roger Chartier, Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris, France:

Jeffrey Ravel's book brilliantly demonstrates the importance of theatrical practices for the definition of political issues and the construction of public opinion in eighteenth-century Paris. It associates for the first time a very precise analysis of theater audiences with a reflection on the constitution of a public sphere within Old Regime politics. Beyond the study of the parterre, this book proposes a profound reappraisal of the processes through which representations of social order and political authority were transformed during the eighteenth century.

Jan Clarke:

Jeffrey Ravel gives an excellent impression of what it would have been like to have frequented the parterre in this period.... This is a highly informative and entertaining book that rightly emphasizes the significant role played by the parterre in seventeenth- and eighteenth-centure theatrical life.

Drawing on a refreshingly eclectic mix of theoretical underpinnings, Ravel revises the interpretation of earlier theater scholars.... He shows us a 'public' that was not constituted primarily in the medium of print and whose opinions did not evolve in a linear fashion, from literary debate to political issues.

Robert M. Isherwood, Vanderbilt University:

A superbly researched book.... Ravel has given us a much misunderstood aspect of the parterres of the grand theaters. It is a breathtaking spectacle of plebes and plebeians.

James H. Johnson:

This is a meticulously researched and fluently written history of an improbable set of political actors. Ravel combs Parisian and provincial archives to map the precise social complexion of spectators, and he scours police and press records to reconstruct the feel of theaters during performances. The conclusions of this broad study point to important modifications in what has been the reigning view of the public sphere in French historiography over the past decade and a half.... The Contested Parterre complicates and enriches the Habermas-inspired view that newspapers, reading societies, and trial briefs were the principal vehicles of a critically engaged public on teh eve of the Revolution.... Ravel provides ample reason for us to rethink who made up this enlightened public and, in the process, restores to that entity its flesh and blood.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction: Political Culture, Print, and Performance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Parterre Practices in Eighteenth-Century Paris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
2. Origins of the Contested Parterre, 1630-80 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
3. "The Parterre Becomes an A~tor," 1680-1725 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
4. Policing the Parisian Parterre, 169/-1/51 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
5. Policing the Parterre in Paris and the Provinces, 1751-89 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
6. The Parterre and French National Identity in the Eighteenth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Appendix: List of Spectators in Paris Parterres by Social Category and Theater, 1717-68 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 272
Illustrations
- Other: 1 chart, 1 map, 1 table, 11 halftones
Keywords: West European History; Performing Arts & Drama; Art History

eBook

Published: September 5, 2018
ISBN: 9781501724626