Divas and Diplomacy in Seventeenth-Century France
Divas and Diplomacy in Seventeenth-Century France
This chapter examines how war affected interdynastic marriage in seventeenth-century France. By late seventeenth century, the hope for European peace had lost its foundations in a shared sacramentology and confidence in women's intercessions. When discrete national historiographies celebrating nation-states rather than dynasties appeared, their writers cast the women whose marriages bound Europe in a single family as tragic victims of their fathers' ambitions and husbands' infidelities. This chapter analyzes how French drama registered the personal and cultural impact of marriage diplomacy's declining prestige by focusing on Pierre Corneille's Horace and Tite et Bérénice, as well as Jean Racine's Andromaque and Bérénice. It also discusses two treaties, the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees and the 1670 Treaty of Dover.
Keywords: war, interdynastic marriage, France, women, Europe, marriage diplomacy, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Treaty of the Pyrenees, Treaty of Dover
Cornell Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
