Scenes from the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power by Abby E. Zanger

Abby E. Zanger. Scenes from the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and Making of Absolutist Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Pp. 244 $45.00.

The absolutism of Louis XIV is a concept that owes its existence to centuries of energetic rhetorical buttressing. In recent years considerable scholarly attention has been paid to the “fabrication” of Louis XIV, mostly focused on the first two decades of Louis XIV’s personal reign. Abby Zanger’s book on the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria Teresa of Spain shifts the focus of attention to this early ceremonial event, which, she argues, set in motion the process of fiction-making that was to become so crucial to the spectacle of sovereign power under the sun king.