Politics and Theater: The Crisis of Legitimacy in Restoration France, 1815-1830 (review)

Kroen, Sheryl. Politics and Theater: The Crisis of Legitimacy in Restoration France, 1815-1830. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: U of California P, 2000. Pp. xiv + 394. ISBN 0-520-22214-8

Contrary to what the title may suggest, Sheryl Kroen's book, Theater and Politics, is not a study of the political theater of the Restoration. In fact, only the last chapter actually deals with the genre of theater, and even then, not with plays written during the Restoration but rather with the role of Molière's Tartuffe in national politics. This is not to say, however, that literary critics won't find any food for thought in this cogent cultural history of the Restoration. On the contrary: drawing on theater as a guiding metaphor to discuss the crisis of legitimacy of the Bourbon monarchy, Kroen makes a convincing case for viewing the entire political culture of the period as thoroughly theatrical (Part I, "Politics as Theater"); and conversely, in Part II "The-ater as Politics," for considering a wide range of mises-en scènes, of performative practices, as the unofficial space of Restoration politics, or more precisely as expression of participation in political life in the face of official exclusion. For Kroen, the dilemma the Restoration government had to face boils down to the question of "how to stage monarchy in a postrevolutionary world?" (1). Her search for an answer leads her to "those venues where different scenes were carefully scripted and staged, not by actual playwrights, directors, and actors, but by churchmen and government officials who regularly orchestrated spectacles during the period" (7). Accordingly, the first chapter examines two kinds of state-sponsored staging, the "mise-en-place" ceremonies enacted by local officials all over France in 1816 as a means to celebrate the return of Bourbons and to restore the monarchy to its symbolic legitimacy; and the public masses celebrated on the anniversary of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. As concrete expressions of the official "politique de l'oubli," the former sought to instill forceful forgetting of the Revolution and of the Empire through the destruction of revolutionary and imperial emblems and through their replacement by the new regime's insignia; the latter, to "free the French from a crime of which they were never guilty."

One of Kroen's most important claims is her challenge to the notion that church and state were "perfectly allied in their counterrevolutionary zeal" (7). On the contrary, she argues, the politics of the church ran counter to those of the state. To make her point, she turns to the missions organized by the church in an effort to rechristianize the country and to restore the monarchy to its sacred rights. Insofar as these missionary revivals made remembering and repentance the pre-condition to a true Restoration and to the French people's salvation they departed from the official politics of forgetting. The expiation of past political sins (including regicide) served as a common thread to a variety of outdoor spectacles that could draw as many as 60,000 penitents at a time: public confessions, ceremonies in cemeteries - where missionaries like La Mennais "preached before an open grave with a skull in hand about the horrors of eternal damnation" (92) - campaigns against "irregular unions" that had been sanctioned by previous regimes, public condemnation of mauvais livres and autos-da-fés, processions culminating in the erection of crosses, all these public displays of emotion testify to the theatricality of Restoration politics.

Kroen's point is that the 1,500 missions orchestrated by the church between 1815 and 1830 undermined the state's politics of forgetting and thus its efforts to reconcile the nation. This may well be true but her clear distinction between state and church politics is rather difficult to maintain. It is achieved by assuming that in politics intent is...