Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIV

Funck-Brentano, Frantz, 1862-1947Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
425K words
Chapters
43

Tags

English Originals World History Suspense ThrillerCourt IntriguePower GameComplex HumanityCriminal PsychologyDocumentary NarrativeSeventeenth Century

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIV by Frantz Funck-BrentanoAuthor: Funck-Brentano, Frantz, 1862-1947,Language: English, Class: HV: Social sciences: Social pathology, Social and Public Welfare, Release Date: Jul 17, 2013

Editor's review

This book is Franz Funck-Brentano's thematic study of the court of Louis XIV, focusing on court intrigues, poisoning cases, and the social pathologies documented in judicial archives. The author excels at recovering detail from primary sources, weaving poison, witchcraft, court factionalism, and judicial procedure into a highly readable historical narrative while remaining conscious of the provenance of his evidence. Its value lies in revealing the power anxieties and moral panics beneath the glittering surface of absolute monarchy, and in illuminating one aspect of the operation of justice and social control in early modern France. The prose reflects the style of early twentieth-century French empirical historiography: solidly grounded in sources yet vividly narrated. It is well suited as supplementary reading for understanding court society and judicial history in the age of Louis XIV, and is best read as a collection of historical essays built around discrete case studies rather than as a general history textbook.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents first to understand the scope of each study, then choose chapters by interest rather than proceeding straight through.
  2. Note names and case threads as you read to help clarify relationships among court figures.
  3. Read alongside basic reference material on the French court and judicial system in the age of Louis XIV.
  4. For the poisoning and witchcraft cases, distinguish carefully between what the sources record and what the author infers.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a work of historical research? It is a work of historical research, not a novel. The author draws on judicial archives and other primary sources to write thematic studies. The narrative is story-like but grounded in historical evidence, and includes the author's discussion of the provenance and reliability of his sources. It should be read as scholarly historical writing rather than fiction.
Can I understand it without knowing the background of the age of Louis XIV? You can read it, but your depth of understanding will suffer. The book involves numerous court figures, institutions, and judicial procedures, and without background knowledge these can be confusing. It is advisable to gain a basic outline of French court politics and the judicial system in the age of Louis XIV before tackling the individual studies.
Is the text of the public-domain electronic edition complete and readable? This is a public-domain English electronic text released by Project Gutenberg. The main text is presented as plain text and typically does not include the original illustrations or appended tables. A reader that supports annotation and dictionary lookup is recommended; tools for looking up French names and place names will help compensate for the absence of notes.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Funck-Brentano, Frantz, 1862-1947 Author · French · 1862–1947

Frantz Funck-Brentano (1862–1947) was a French historian and librarian whose detailed biography is difficult to set out because public information is limited. He focused on the ancien régime and its judicial and prison systems, and is known especially for his studies of the Bastille and the court of Louis XIV. Two of his works are included here: Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIV, which examines poisoning cases and court intrigues in the reign of Louis XIV, and Legends of the Bastille, which considers the legends and historical facts surrounding the fortress. His writing draws heavily on archival materials and individual cases, combining judicial records, court scandal and institutional history in a style that is both scholarly and readable, offering readers a vivid perspective on pre-revolutionary France and the workings of power under the ancien régime.