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Cultivated power : flowers, culture, and politics in the reign of Louis XIV / Elizabeth Hyde.
LIBRA SB457.65 .H94 2005
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Hyde, Elizabeth.
- Series:
- Penn studies in landscape architecture
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Louis XIV, King of France, 1638-1715.
- Louis.
- Gardens, French--History--17th century.
- Gardens, French.
- Gardens, French--History--18th century.
- Gardens--France--History--17th century.
- Gardens.
- Gardens--France--History--18th century.
- Flowers--Symbolic aspects.
- Flowers.
- History.
- France--History--Louis XIV, 1643-1715.
- France.
- Physical Description:
- xxiii, 330 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2005]
- Summary:
- Cultivated Power explores the collection, cultivation, and display of flowers in early modern France at the historical moment when flowering plants, many of which were becoming known in Europe for the first time, piqued the curiosity of European gardeners and botanists, merchants and ministers, dukes and kings. Elizabeth Hyde reveals how flowers became uniquely capable of revealing the curiosity, reason, and taste of those elite men who engaged in their cultivation.
- The cultural and increasingly political value of such qualities was not lost on royal panegyrists, who seized upon the new meanings of flowers in celebrating the glory of Louis XIV. Using previously unexplored archival sources, Hyde recovers the extent of floral plantations in the gardens of Versailles and the sophisticated system of nurseries created to fulfill the demands of the king's gardeners. She further examines how the successful cultivation of those flowers made it possible for Louis XIV to demonstrate that his reign was a golden era surpassing even that of antiquity.
- Cultivated Power expands our knowledge of flowers in European history beyond the Dutch tulip mania, and restores our understanding of the importance of flowers in the French classical garden. The book also develops a fuller perspective on the roles of gender, rank, and material goods in the age of the baroque. Using flowers to analyze the movement of culture in early modern society, Cultivated Power ultimately highlights the influence of curious florists on the taste of the king, and the extension of the cultural into the realm of the political.
- Contents:
- Chapter 1 Disorderly Flowers 1
- Floral Seduction: Death, Sex, and Flowers 3
- Trading on the Power of Flowers 19
- Chapter 2 Refashioning the Culture of Flowers in Early Modern France 32
- Curiosity and Flowers 35
- The Sweet Society of the Curious Florists 43
- Chapter 3 Cultivating the Flower 55
- The Florists' Flowers 58
- Unlocking the Door to the Temple of Flora 76
- Chapter 4 Cultivating the Man 89
- The Theater of the Goddess of Flowers 90
- Nature into Art 107
- "Jardin d'Hyver," or Flowers in Print 119
- Chapter 5 Cultivating the King 137
- Royal Precedents 139
- Flowers in the Gardens of Louis XIV 145
- Floral Merchantilism 159
- Flowers and the "Histoire du Roi" 167
- Appendix A Extract of the Inventory...by Sieur Cottereau of Flowering Plants and Bulbs that He Offers to Furnish for the Gardens of the Royal Households 203
- Appendix B Plants Included in Jean Donneau de Vise's Histoire de Louis le Grand 209.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [293]-321) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0812238265
- OCLC:
- 56356059
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