Overview

The articles in this volume use a variety of disciplinary approaches to examine texts and archival documents recording sixteenth-century French ceremonial entries. By their very nature, ceremonial entries require such an approach: they bring together a number of artistic media, including music, architecture, and literature, and a range of political concerns, like international diplomacy and the relations between urban and royal power. Few cultural constructs offer such rich and varied terrain to the student of sixteenth-century France. The collection looks to examine salient aspects of ceremonial entries in order to cast a new light on early-modern French society.

Nicolas Russell is assistant professor of French Studies at Smith College, Massachusetts. His research interests include early modern intellectual history and conceptions of mental faculties. He is currently studying the concept of collective memory as it appears in sixteenth-century historiography and royal entries.

Hélène Visentin is associate professor of French Studies at Smith College, Massachusetts, and a member of the Groupe de Recherche sur les Entrées Solennelles. Her research projects bear on the history and the aesthetics of the performing arts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

276 pp. 
ISBN: 978-0-7727-2033-7 softcover
Published: 2007

Reviews

“This volume offers a variety of scholarly approaches, all solidly grounded in a great deal of empirical research. As a result, this collection will make a major contribution to festival studies in Renaissance France.”
— Bonner Mitchell, University of Missouri, Columbia

“L’ouvrage érudit est de lecture aisée, les textes sont très bien documentés et les sources clairement indiquées. La diversité des perspectives d’études est d’un grand intérêt, et plusieurs articles offrent de nouvelles pistes de recherche sur les entrées solennelles.”
— Marie-France Wagner, Université Concordia, Montréal

The Sixteenth Century Journal, 41:2 (Summer 2010), pp. 541-542. Reviewed by Linda Rouillard.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Nicolas Russell and Hélène Visentin, Introduction, "The Multilayered Production of Meaning in Sixteenth-Century French Ceremonial Entries"

1. Margaret M. McGowan, “The French Royal Entry in the Renaissance: The Status of the Printed Text”
2. Daniel Russell, “Emblematic Discourse in Renaissance French Royal Entries”
3. Luisa Capodieci, “Sic itur ad astra. Narration, figures célestes et platonisme dans les entrées d’Henri II (Reims 1547, Lyon 1548, Paris 1549, Rouen 1550)”
4. William Kemp, “Transformations in the Printing of Royal Entries during the Reign of François I: The Role of Geofroy Tory”
5. Richard Cooper, “Legate’s Luxury: The Entries of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to Avignon and Carpentras, 1553”
6. Benôit Bolduc, “IN FVMO DARE LVCEM: Les triomphes faictz a l’entrée du Roy a Chenonceau (1559/60)”
7. Ann W. Ramsey, “The Ritual Meaning of Henry IV’s 1594 Parisian Entry”

Conclusion, Lawrence M. Bryant, “From Communal Ritual to Royal Spectacle: Some Observations on the Staging of Royal Entries (1450-1600)”