Katherine Ibbett , The Style of the State in French Theater, 1630–1660The Style of the State in French Theater, 1630–1660 by Katherine IbbettReview by: John D. LyonsModern Philology, Vol. 110, No. 1 (August 2012), pp. E42-E45Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/666547 .

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B O O K R E V I E W

The Style of the State in French Theater, 1630–1660. Katherine Ibbett. Farn-ham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. Pp. viþ176.

The Style of the State in French Theater is an extremely original and thought-ful book about political and dramaturgic theory and practice in France dur-ing the crucial midpoint of the seventeenth century, a period in whichLouis XIII, as king, and Anne d’Autriche, as regent, ruled with Richelieuand then Mazarin as their ministers. It saw Cinq-Mars’s conspiracy againstRichelieu and the conspirator’s execution in 1642, the messy but excitingdays of the Fronde (1648–53), the first three decades of the Academie Fran-caise, and the rise of a new theatrical style, neoclassicism, in the work ofJean de Mairet, Tristan l’Hermite, Georges de Scudery, Jean Rotrou, andPierre Corneille. In short, it was a time when much happened in theaterand in politics, when, one might say, the shape of both changed in signifi-cant, radical, and interdependent ways. This interdependency is at the coreof Katherine Ibbett’s book, of which the two central characters are Riche-lieu and Corneille. It seems appropriate that her study is framed chronolog-ically between important dates in their lives: Richelieu was confirmed in hisascendency by a memorably dramatic moment, the ‘‘journee des dupes’’ in1630, and Corneille marked the apogee of his dominance over Frenchdrama with his triumphal 1660 collective edition of his plays with its cri-tiques of each individual work as well as the more general reflections of thethree Discours on dramatic theory. As Ibbett so perceptively writes, the play-wright thus created a literary testament comparable to Richelieu’s post-humous Testament politique.

Ibbett’s study weaves together gender theory, biopolitics, governmental-ity, colonial history, neoclassical poetics, the theory of the reason of state,history of religion, and iconography. All is exquisitely documented andbased on erudite and firsthand analysis of the relevant texts, which range

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from Giovanni Botero’s work on reason of state (studied in its influential1599 French translation) to Jean de Silhon’s Le ministre d’estat (1631), andfrom Innocent Gentillet’s Anti-Machiavel (1576) to Gabriel Naude’s Consid-erations politiques sur les coups d’etat (1639). The core of it all is, however, a setof three of Corneille’s tragedies: his two martyr tragedies, Polyeucte (1642)and Theodore, vierge et martyre (1646), and the play that he designated as hisfavorite, Rodogune, princesse des Parthes (1644–45). These are accompaniedby briefer reflections on a number of other Cornelian tragedies (especiallyLe Cid, Horace, and Cinna) as well as two less well-known martyr tragedies:Jean Puget de la Serre’s Thomas Morus ou la constance (published 1642, aplay that Richelieu is said to have seen three times) and Alberte Barbed’Ernecourt de Saint-Balmon’s Les jumeaux martyrs (written in the 1640s).

With this set of texts, Ibbett builds in five chapters a fascinating argu-ment concerning the parallel transformation of aesthetics and the exerciseof political power from immediate, rapid, spectacular, and routinely male-centered physical violence to an emphasis on the power of indirect, long-term, more often female-centered (but still often physical) exercise of con-trol. This complex argument unfolds in a set of analyses—the term ‘‘medi-tation’’ might be more appropriate—that juxtapose apparently disparatecultural productions to reveal their connecting threads. Fittingly, for abook that concerns French neoclassicism (and thus, in part, the Aristote-lian legacy), Ibbett begins in medias res, at the midpoint of the century,with the pamphlet campaign against Jules Mazarin, the minister of thequeen regent during the Fronde. This provides a good starting point for awide-ranging survey of the lively debates since the Renaissance about poet-ics and politics and about recent critical attempts to give accounts of therelative situation of the two. After showing that much contemporary schol-arship and theory stride off in one of these two directions, finally ignoringone of the poles, Ibbett charts her own course along the lines of the ‘‘activ-ist formalism’’ of Marjorie Levinson and Helene Merlin-Kajman.

In the second chapter, Ibbett analyzes representations of martyrs inpaintings by Hendrik ter Brugghen and Georges de La Tour as well as theplays by Puget de la Serre and Saint-Balmon, showing how the physical suf-fering of the male saints are no longer the center of the spectators’ atten-tion. The martyrs are, in the French theater of this time, displaced from thestage, leaving women characters to lament and to suffer their loss. Theblood-shedding martyrdom that was so much a reference for the fighters ofthe religious civil wars as well as for playwrights is replaced by a more psycho-logical suffering in a ‘‘subtly transgressive questioning of the values of hero-ism’’ accompanied by the promotion of a combination of ‘‘patience andfidelity that comes to define generosity, rather than the bloody acts’’ (53).

A further move away from the display of bloody martyrdom occurs inPolyeucte and Theodore, within each of which Ibbett ingeniously and persua-

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sively shows the increased importance of characters in administrative roles,those who are responsible for the treatment of the martyr. Corneille, as sheshows, instead of concentrating on the experience of the martyr Polyeucte,who cannot wait to die, directs attention to the shifty figure of the martyr’sfather-in-law, who tries to decide whether it is in his own interest to keepPolyeucte alive or to execute him in an attempt to curry favor with theRoman authorities. An issue facing such Roman imperial governors (sug-gestively set next to the comparable figures of the French and Spanish colo-nial governors of the seventeenth century itself ) was the value of conserva-tion and exploitation versus the sovereign exercise of the death penalty. Inthis connection, Ibbett makes use, of course, of Foucault’s concept of ‘‘gov-ernmentality,’’ but she gets most of her support from seventeenth-centuryprimary texts that deal with conservation and management (including‘‘menagement’’—that is, caring and sparing use) of human subjects. Ananalogous problem arises for the governing couple in Theodore, where in-stead of a sudden death, the martyr is sent off to a brothel to prolong hersuffering and to exploit her as a resource.

Ibbett’s study of Rodogune logically follows from the many conceptsdeveloped in earlier chapters (shift to a feminine perspective, removal ofthe suffering body from the stage, importance of governmentality, conser-vation with its attendant move from short- to long-term views) and is alsoone of the most innovative readings of this tragedy. Instead of foreground-ing the roles of the twin brothers, one of whom is heir to the throne, Ibbettdevotes more attention to the queen regent, Cleopatre, and her hostage,Rodogune. Since the regent’s retention of power depends on delaying thedisclosure of the key piece of information (the birth order of the twins),the relation between information and time is central to the practice of gov-erning but also, as Ibbett shows, to the creation of dramatic suspense by theplaywright himself.

The final chapter is Ibbett’s own coup de theatre, one of those suddenturns of events so prized in neoclassical poetics. Throughout the book, therelation of theory to practice has been tantalizingly displayed but also, aswe finally see, displaced. By leaving to the end the chapter entitled ‘‘TheRules of Art,’’ Ibbett brilliantly stages an attack on the persistent maladyof studies in seventeenth-century French theater, the almost universal in-sistence on teaching and studying the plays only within a framework of‘‘rules,’’ presented as if they preceded the writing of the plays themselves.By delaying her full exposition of this problem, Ibbett demonstrates implic-itly that even scholars who have fulminated against the misconception of arule-driven dramaturgy have not had the courage of their convictions andhave fallen into the trap of rules-first exposition. Moreover, with an insightthat is simultaneously penetrating and unifying, she shows that both Riche-lieu and Corneille wrote out their ‘‘rules’’ only decades after their major

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accomplishments in the state and on the stage. She also elucidates themany characteristics and practices they share, such as a primary (or initial)focus on practice and a concomitant suspicion of theory, self-exemplarity,vigorously defended flexibility, and a certain way of conceiving the public.

The Style of the State in French Theater is one of the most refreshing and use-ful books on early modern France published in the last two decades. It will,I am sure, prove to be a model for a new generation of scholars in this field.

John D. LyonsUniversity of Virginia

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