Les récits de conjuration sous le règne de Louis XIV

In my thesis, I analyse a series of conspiracy narratives published in the reign of Louis XIV by such authors as Sarasin, Retz, Saint-Réal, Vertot, Le Noble, etc. Though pertaining to a variety of literary genres, the corpus texts share a paradoxical aesthetics alternating between praise and condemnation, rendering their political significance difficult to decipher.

To this end, the first part of my thesis reconstitutes the historical, theoretical and aesthetical context in which conspiracies occurred. This approach highlights various aspects of the same paradox: from historical point of view, the corpus texts appeared when the nobility tended to disregard conspiracy as a means of action; in the history of ideas, philosophers could not always keep the theory of absolutism clear of the compromising topic of conspiracy and, in literature, praise for the king and praise for conspirators were often intertwined to convey a dual message of virtue and obedience.

Thus it is at the level of aesthetics that an answer to the political ambiguity of the corpus texts should be sought. With this in mind, in the second part of my thesis, I analyse firstly the specificity of each text and show that despite their link to history or the historical novel, they do not form a genre apart. Instead, the coherence of the corpus texts is to be found in the aesthetics of paradoxical praise for peace and in the reassuring virtues of narratives which, to the readers' delight, use the threat of the fall of empires as a means of showing the benefits of a stable and glorious monarchy.