عنوان

The librettos of Étienne de Jouy (1807-1829) :

Number

TLets656952

Title Proper

The librettos of Étienne de Jouy (1807-1829) :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Kubo, Ayumi

Title Proper by Another Author

a difficult career during the Napoleonic and Restoration eras

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Eisen, Cliff; Fend, Michael

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

King's College London (University of London)

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2014

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

King's College London (University of London)

Text preceding or following the note

2014

Text of Note

During the reign of Napoleon, the Paris Opéra was placed under the State's supervisory system wherein its productions were closely monitored by Napoleon through the intermediary of the Préfets du Palais, and later, through the office of Surintendant général des spectacles. During the period, Napoleon intended to capitalise on the institution's potential for state propaganda. Étienne de Jouy's Fernand Cortez was a case in point, as Napoleon hoped to gain support for his war in the Spanish peninsula. Apart from writing for musical theatre, Jouy worked as a journalist and as a critic of social themes throughout his literary career. A lifelong admirer of Voltaire, he inherited the Enlightenment's claims to social justice, as he demonstrated in a lecture series of 1822 on socio-political topics. By focusing on Jouy's librettos from the Napoleonic period, whose subjects had been the site of Enlightenment's debates, and in particular on imperialism, colonialism and the status of women, I explore his narratives and dramaturgies in relation to the politics pursued by the Napoleonic state, as it embarked on a series of colonial wars and reintroduced a distinctive patriarchal order. My thesis also seeks to shed light on Jouy's activities during the Romantic revolution of the 1820s. On the one hand, he defended some central conventions of eighteenth-century French opera in his Essai of 1826, such as the concept of the marvellous and a happy ending. On the other hand, his choice and treatment of the Tell legend itself reveals Jouy's empathy with the new wave of liberalism, as it was in the process of sweeping away the Restoration. He also showed himself under the influence of Anglo-German literature, particularly propagated in Germaine de Staël's De l'Allemagne (1814), and of the popularity of Rossini.

Kubo, Ayumi

Eisen, Cliff; Fend, Michael

King's College London (University of London)

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y