Please join the French-Speaking Worlds: Then and Now for a talk entitled "Beyond Classicism: Comets on Stage in 17th-century France" by Claire Goldstein (Professor of French and Director of the Humanities Program, UC Davis).

Abstract:
Claire Goldstein will discuss her recent book In the Sun King’s Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France, which takes as a point of departure two unusually bright comets that galvanised public attention in 1664-65 and 1680-81, bookending the period during which Louis XIV’s sun king mythology was created. Considered at the time to be chaotic and without discernible form or pattern, comets defied the heliocentric order to which French politics and culture aspired. Goldstein will share how her research into texts, performances, events, architecture, and debates inspired by these comets offers a changed perspective on seventeenth-century France. Reading the era through comets complicates the narrative of a race toward rationalization, classicism, and modernity, indexing instead a messy period in which the spectacular was sometimes also inscrutable. Professor Goldstein will conclude with current research on the innovative and enterprising publishing practices of Nicholas de Blégny, a best-selling and long forgotten multi-hyphenate physician-author whose work she encountered while researching comets and the early periodical press. 

 

Bio: 
Claire Goldstein is Professor of French and Director of the Humanities Program at UC Davis. Her research in ancien régime French-language literature and culture has explored subjects such as garden design, art and architecture; theater, ballet, and fête performances; astronomy; early modern fashion accessories; and early journalism. Her scholarship is motivated by her abiding interests in visual and material culture, her curiosity about how the things people see, and the objects and material practices that they engage with, create cultural meanings. She is the author of In the Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth Century France (Northwestern UP, 2025) and Vaux and Versailles: The Appropriations, Erasures, and Accidents That Made Modern France (U Penn Press, 2007).

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Hosted by the French-Speaking Worlds: Then and Now Focal Group, sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Research Unit and co-sponsored by the France-Stanford Center and Stanford Global Studies. This event is part of Stanford Global Studies’ Global Research Workshop Program.