The personal rule of Louis XIV, following on from a long period of royal minority and apprenticeship, lasted 54 years from 1661 to 1715. But the second half of this personal rule has, until recently, received significantly less scholarly attention than the 1660s and 1670s. This has obscured some of the very real changes and developments that occurred between the early 1680s and the mid-1690s, by which time a new generation of younger royals had come to prominence, France was engulfed in international war on a greater scale than ever before, and the king was visibly no longer as vigorous or healthy as he had once been. The essays in this volume take a close look at the way a new set of political, social, cultural and economic dispensations emerged from the mid-1680s to create a different France in the final decades of Louis XIV's reign, even though the basic ideological, social and economic underpinnings of the country remained very largely the same. The contributions examine such varied matters as the structure and practices of government, naval power, the financial operations of the state, trade and commerce, social pressures, overseas expansion, religious dissent, music, literature and the fine arts.

The French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) was home to one of the richest public theatre traditions of the colonial-era Caribbean.  This book examines the relationship between public theatre and the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue—something that is generally given short shrift owing to a perceived lack of documentation.  Here, a range of materials and methodologies are used to explore pressing questions including the ‘mitigated spectatorship’ of the enslaved, portrayals of enslaved people in French and Creole repertoire, the contributions of enslaved people to theatre-making, and shifting attitudes during the revolutionary era.  The book demonstrates that slavery was no mere backdrop to this portion of theatre history but an integral part of its story.  It also helps recover the hidden experiences of some of the enslaved individuals who became entangled in that story.

Cutting across academic boundaries, this volume brings together scholars from different disciplines who have explored together the richness and complexity of colonial-era Caribbean theatre. The volume offers a series of original essays that showcase individual expertise in light of broader group discussions. Asking how we can research effectively and write responsibly about colonial-era Caribbean theatre today, our primary concern is methodology. Key questions are examined via new research into individual case studies on topics ranging from Cuban blackface, commedia dell’arte in Suriname and Jamaican oratorio to travelling performers and the influence of the military and of enslaved people on theatre in Saint-Domingue. Specifically, we ask what particular methodological challenges we as scholars of colonial-era Caribbean theatre face and what methodological solutions we can find to meet those challenges. Areas addressed include our linguistic limitations in the face of Caribbean multilingualism; issues raised by national, geographical or imperial approaches to the field; the vexed relationship between metropole and colony; and, crucially, gaps in the archive. We also ask what implications our findings have for theatre performance today – a question that has led to the creation of a new work set in a colonial theatre and outlined in the volume’s concluding chapter.

French poet and critic Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636-1711) was by turns venerated (in the eighteenth century) and reviled (in the nineteenth century) as the lawgiver of French classicism. Today critics see his achievement as more varied and complex than the label of classicism generally allows. This selection of Boileau's poems, translated with spirit and carefully annotated by Burton Raffel, brings the work of Boileau to English-speaking readers for the first time in a generation. Much admired for his wit and ingenuity, Boileau perceived the role of the satirist as the scourge of bad writing and delighted in the notion of "l'ami du vrai," the brash truth-teller and enemy of humbug, inflation, and equivocation. Raffel's translations, vigorous and engaging, preserve the meaning of Boileau's poems and invite today's reader to enjoy the poet's astute perceptions. Julia Prest's insightful introduction to the volume provides an overview of Boileau's life and achievement.