Political fictions, endings

In La Délivrance de Renaud, a ballet performed at the French court on Sunday, January 29, 1617, Louis XIII had danced in advance his political project, the assassination of Concini, like a political warning that would not attempt to prevent the event, but give it its meaning in advance - while preserving intact, unentamied, its sudden and marvelous brusqueness. Beginning with an evocation of this episode in which the prince plays with fire but doesn't get burned, the 2017-2018 lecture concludes with that of its medieval double, that political hullabaloo that goes awry: the "bal des ardents" on the night of January 28 to 29, 1393, in an attempt to bring together reflection on political fictions around a consideration of representation inspired by an analysis of the first of the Three Discourses on the Condition of Great People that Blaise Pascal wrote around 1660. If political fiction gives us news of tyranny, it never warns us of anything - it's a warning that is never heard by anyone.