Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV - Hardcover

Drawing on the work of the Duke of Saint-Simon (1675-1755), "Memoirs", Le Roy Ladurie offers a portrait of life under Louis XIV, focusing on the fundamental issues of hierarchy and rank in a tightly controlled setting. Using a range of tools, such as ethnography, history, literary criticism and histography, this is a historical essay about court life, a world in which man is born unequal, a world circumscribed by purity of bloodline, which nonetheless directly preceded the birth of democratic thought and political action. This book is not only about Saint-Simon's place in the court at Versailles but also about the court itself and how it forces us to re-evaluate political life in France during the Old Regime.

The Duke of Saint-Simon (1675-1755) was by all accounts, including his own, a sensitive, self-obsessed, ill-tempered man. A courtier and phenomenal chronicler of court life under Louis XIV, he produced the monumental work Memoirs, running to thousands of pages, in which the intrigues, personalities, activities, and gossip of life at Versailles are recorded in acerbic detail. Drawing heavily on these Memoirs, renowned historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, with the collaboration of Jean-François Fitou, offers a fascinating and detailed portrait of life under Louis XIV, focusing on the fundamental issues of hierarchy and rank in this tightly controlled universe.

Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV, expertly translated by Arthur Goldhammer, is a historical essay about court life, built with the wide range of tools Le Roy Ladurie so expertly employs: ethnography, history, literary criticism, and historiography. He recreates a world in which man is most definitely born unequal and circumscribed entirely by purity of bloodline, which nonetheless directly preceded the birth of democratic thought and political action. Locked into a virtual caste system, courtiers formed within their ranks cabals, factions, and groups bonded by common ideological principles in order to survive the political order of the court. Thus Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV is not only about Saint-Simon's place in this constellation but also the constellation itself and how understanding it forces us to a reevaluation of the idea of "political class" in France during the Old Regime.

From adultery and marital mésalliances to intense religious debate and fervor, and including a biographical sketch of Saint-Simon and more than 30 illustrations of court life and its members, Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV will delight those interested in French history as well as instruct those interested in political history. Le Roy Ladurie's The Beggar and the Professor was hailed as a study that added "color and texture to our understanding of the Renaissance and Reformation," according to the New York Times Book Review. With Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV, the same can now be said of his contribution to our understanding of the eighteenth century.