Before the show

If tyranny requires a fictional detour in order to be considered historically, this is because it involves an enunciative and political despotism. This is the basic hypothesis of this year's lecture: an equivalence, or homology, between the art of governing and the art of storytelling, which implies tying the fiction of tyranny to the tyranny of fiction. This, for example, is what ^20th-century Spanish-American novels document, and in particular the narrative sub-genre known as the "dictator novel", when it lends its voice to a paper tyrant, both burlesque and disquieting. This introductory session aims first of all to recall the main methodological contributions of the previous year's lecture on political fiction, recalling with Jacques Rancière that "what distinguishes fiction from ordinary experience is not a lack of reality, but an excess of rationality". Political fiction thus appears as a magnifying glass, enabling us to observe, after the fact, the harbingers of historical change. These hypotheses are put to the test in a case study: the dramatization of Louis XIII's political project in the ballet dance La Délivrance de Renaud (January 29, 1617), a fictional foretaste of his seizure of power. As in Mario Vargas Llosa's La Fête au bouc (2000), burlesque disorder is a carnivalesque inversion of power. To thwart the narrative's traps, we must, like Louis Marin, follow the "light and skilful narrators".

Contents

• "For the most part, authoritarian power is freely consented to" (Timothy Snyder, De la tyrannie.Vingt leçons du ^XXe siècle, Paris, 2017)
• A collection of theoretical short stories, where the "anticipated obedience" of the plot to morality
• The starting hypothesis: a knot between the art of governing and the art of storytelling
• When the "dictator's novel" mimes and undermines the despot's voice: Le Recours de la méthode (Alejo Carpentier, 1974)
• "He throws his voice before him to be heard, listened to, obeyed. Though he appears mute, taciturn, silent, his silence is an order. Which means that in the Supreme, there are at least two people" (Augusto Roa Bastos,Moi, le Suprême, 1974)
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "multiple monologue" and the "neutralization of fascination" (Emmanuel Bouju, La transcription de l'histoire, Rennes, 2006)
• Carnivalesque chaos: "a fib of the imagination, a tyrant for laughs who never knew where was the reverse and where was the place of this life" (L'Automne du patriarche, 1975)
• Back to the Tuscan novellistica , and a reminder of some propositions from the previous year's lecture on political fictions as truth-producing experiences: metaphors, prefigurations, pastiches and postiches
• "What distinguishes fiction from ordinary experience is not a lack of reality, but an excess of rationality" (Jacques Rancière, Les bords de la fiction, Paris, 2017)
• "Facing the Leviathan " : Backtracking from a point of repulsion: the new age of representation
• On the morning of May 15, 1610, an eight-year-old..
• Louis XIII and the political fiction of the medieval origins of the Lit de justice
• Ritual disruption, theatrical improvisation
• "What do we have to oppose the absolute power of the Emperor? Neither rights nor ideas. Only an accumulation of memories, true or invented, and images" (Gilbert Dagron, Empereur et prêtre. Étude sur le " césaropapisme " byzantin, Paris, 1996)
• Le "portrait royal rasséréné" de Henri IV et le "roi hanté" Louis XIII: l'âge de la "représentation représentée" (Yann Lignereux, Les rois imaginaires. A visual history of the monarchy from Charles VIII to Louis XIV, Rennes, 2016)
• The majestic coup of Concini's assassination on April 25, 1617
• A visual and textual history of the tyrant's factory (Hélène Duccini, Faire voir, faire croire. L'opinion publique sous Louis XIII, Seyssel, 2003)
• Les Merveilles et coup d'essai de Louis le Juste : "Que vous, Sire, ayez eu une patience merveilleuse et conduite si secrète qu'à peine se trouverait elle semblable aux âmes les plus chenues, c'est ce qui jette me comme hors de moi" (That you, Sire, have had a marvelous patience and conducted it so secretly that it would scarcely be found similar to the most fleshy souls, is what throws me as if out of myself)
• The ideal prince as optical illusion: a history of anamorphoses and stances
• A coup d'état is like a thunderstorm: "one sees the thunder fall sooner than one hears it rumble in the clouds" (Gabriel Naudé, Considérations politiques sur les coups d'État, 1639)
• Political fiction as a political magnifying glass, enabling us to observe the warning signs after the fact
• A fictional foretaste: the ballet dance of Renaud's Délivrance (January 29, 1617)
• The striking force of political pathos causes representation to falter (Sylvaine Guyot)
• A purifying fire will "recall all his subjects to their duty, and purge them of all pretexts for disobedience"(Discours au vray du ballet dansé par le Roy)
• The dramatization of Louis XIII's political project: an acting out ?
• When the event becomes, in real time, the scenography of its own unfolding: "Merci, grand merci à vous, à cette heure je suis roi" (Thank you, thank you very much, at this hour I am king)
• Fictional rehearsal and tragic closure: La Magicienne étrangère
• The king's two costumes: "the demonic force of fire [is] transformed and intensified into the light of the sun king" (Giovanni Carreri, Jerusalem Delivered. Gestes d'amour et de guerres, Paris, 2005)
• As in La fête au bouc (Mario Vargas Llosa, 2000), burlesque disorder is a carnivalesque inversion for the purposes of power
• "And here's the founding myth: one day, instead of striking, force spoke? Instead of making itself feared, by its very necessity, of waging war to ensure that it was the strongest, it invested itself in the signs that designated it, it put itself on display. She made a speech, a speech that repeats only this: that she is justice and truth" (Louis Marin, Le récit est un piège, 1978)
• Is it unstoppable? The lesson of the beasts and the "brief machinations" of fables (La Fontaine, "Le Pouvoir des fables") and fairy tales (Perrault, Le Chat botté)
• Let's follow the "light and skilful narrators"