Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century France and England

Gesa Stedman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351946964
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

Gesa Stedman's ambitious new study is a comprehensive account of cross-channel cultural exchanges between seventeenth-century France and England, and includes discussion of a wide range of sources and topics. Literary texts, garden design, fashion, music, dance, food, the book market, and the theatre as well as key historical figures feature in the book. Importantly, Stedman concentrates on the connection between actual, material transfer and its symbolic representation in both visual and textual sources, investigating material exchange processes in order to shed light on the connection between actual and symbolic exchange. Individual chapters discuss exchanges instigated by mediators such as Henrietta Maria and Charles II, and textual and visual representations of cultural exchange with France in poetry, restoration comedies, fashion discourse, and in literary devices and characters. Well-written and accessible, Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century France and England provides needed insight into the field of cultural exchange, and will be of interest to both literary scholars and cultural historians.

Chapter 1

Introduction:
Theories of Cultural Exchange

But his [Charles II’s] fair soul, transform’d by that French dame,

Had lost all sense of honor, justice, fame.

Like a tame spinster in’th seragl’ he sits,

Besieg’d by whores, buffoons, and bastard chits;

Lull’d in security, rolling in lust,

Resigns his crown to angel Carwell’s trust. ¹

This quotation from the satirical dialogue ‘Britannia and Raleigh’, probably written by John Ayloffe and published in 1674 or 1675, pinpoints two key issues in this study: the struggle for cultural, economic, and political hegemony between England and France and the anxieties about a loss of national identity if England and the English way of life did not prevail.

The verses highlight the image of the French as a sexualised, devouring nation which threatens not only English cultural ‘purity’, but also the United Kingdom’s sovereignty. In the text, this set of negative associations is embodied by Louise de Kéroualle (‘Carwell’), Duchess of Portsmouth and mistress of Charles II. According to the author, her sexual allure, combined with her beauty, leads to the king’s loss of individual stature and political power. A representative of French culture like Louise de Kéroualle is, thus, symbolically linked with the political, moral, and sexual degeneration of the English court. The quotation is also a telling instance of the interaction between literature and politics, and less explicitly and in a more general sense, between norms of representation and the political and cultural conditions in England after the Restoration. These interactions are central to this study and lie at the heart of the approach to cultural exchange which is proposed here.

Cultural Exchange Studies: The Key Issues

Cultural exchange or transfer, in the terminology of German and French cultural historians who opened up this new field of research, is defined as

… not only the actual and pure transfers such as the exchange of capital, labourers, goods, concepts and ideas, but also the images of and debates about the other society. Such comparisons by contemporaries do not only allow an insight into the way people thought at the time, including all the stereotypes prevalent in the period, but may also give interesting hints as to the reasons for different developments or the rapprochement of societies.²

This quotation from Hartmut Kaelble’s book Der historische Vergleich not only explicitly lists the elements inherent in cultural transfer, but also contains two important implicit assumptions. Firstly, cultural exchange may lead to social and cultural change. This facet of cultural transfer is hinted at in the use of the term ‘different developments’, indicating that what is at stake here is not an assessment of a given society or culture as constant and unvarying, but the influences and factors that contribute to a culture’s transformation.³ Secondly, images, debates, and actions are in some way interconnected. Or, to put it differently: the symbolic side of culture – ideas, concepts, verbal images, stereotypes – cannot be separated from the material side – actions, goods, people, and vice versa.

The advantages of the term ‘transfer’ or ‘exchange’ over the more traditional concept of ‘influence’ are immediately obvious. In these new terms, processes of reception become the focus of interest and the emphasis now lies on cultural and social transformation rather than on a mere exchange of goods or ideas between basically self-contained cultures. Furthermore, there is no privileging of one culture over the other, so that neither dominance, nor, which would be worse, cultural superiority is implicitly celebrated.⁴ However, while a number of important elements involved in cultural exchange are named in this short quotation – people, things, actions, ideas, the dimensions of the ‘other’, and the consequences of cultural transfer – what seems to be missing is precisely what is central to an understanding of cultural exchange, i.e. the specific interrelation between the immaterial and the material aspects of cultural exchange and the transformation that it triggers.

In his seminal article ‘Kultureller Austausch’ (2000) which unfortunately was never published in English, Peter Burke has given us a number of categories for describing the main elements involved in cultural transfer.⁵ He suggests that degrees of closeness between the two (or more) cultures in question – ranging from total rejection to total adaptation – may be one of them. The conditions of such meetings and convergences, as well as the consequences such meetings may have are two more categories. He warns us that neither people nor ‘systems’ are sufficient to explain why cultural encounters happen the way they do. But what we will not find in Burke or in contributions by other leading figures in the debates about the theory of cultural transfer, e.g. Johannes Paulmann, Urs Bitterli, or Michel Espagne, and Michael Werner,⁶ is a useful category with which one can conceptualise the interaction between the immaterial and the material aspects of cultural exchange. Neither an exclusive emphasis on objects or people nor a mere interest in ‘ideas’, which in some approaches seem to float from one country to another without any apparent medium, can explain what actually happens when two cultures meet. For a more promising approach we therefore have to turn to Lisa Jardine’s book Worldly Goods. A New History of the Renaissance (1996). She has admirably set the cult of the Renaissance back on its feet by demonstrating how closely new concepts, ideas, and artistic styles were linked to material considerations such as power, money, or free access to means of communication, production, or travel. Yet even Lisa Jardine fails to provide us with an explanation of how this interaction in fact works.

Context and Representation

I want to suggest here that a contextual approach to representation is the best way forward. Some texts and images only show traces of the fact that some kind of cultural exchange has taken place. Others, however, do more: they represent cultural exchange in actu, and in the process, frequently also reflect upon it. Hence, a concentration on verbal and visual representation and reflection in conjunction with an analysis of actual, material transfer processes and exchanges promises to provide a productive blueprint for a solution to the problem.

Following Roger Chartier and Johannes Fabian, among others, my understanding of representation rests on the assumption that every representation has a creative, constructive potential. Obviously, representation is not some sort of reflection of a given reality. Rather, the way in which reality is perceived depends on the way in which an image or a piece of writing orders and channels our responses to it. In this view, representation and explicit reflection, the ‘immaterial’ or ‘symbolic’ aspects of cultural exchange, move centre stage and raise the question to what extent the material processes of cultural exchange are influenced and shaped by representation and reflection. Maintaining the categorical distinction between material and immaterial aspects of culture is an indispensable condition for an understanding of how they interact.⁷

Definitions of ‘Culture’

In my use of the phrases ‘cultural exchange’ and ‘cultural transfer’, ‘culture’ has two meanings.⁸ First, it describes what is transferred, i.e. the ‘object’ of the exchange processes. However, my use of the word ‘culture’ is much more comprehensive: for me, the term also designates whatever can usefully be identified as belonging to a national culture. ‘Cultural exchange’, therefore, means exchange and transfer between cultures. This includes people acting as mediators and often as instigators of exchange; objects – among them books, texts, and images such as fashion prints or portraits; social, political, and cultural practices such as food, dance, and fashion; institutions such as the maîtresse-en-titre, the chief official mistress of the king; and finally, ideas – ranging, for example, from versions of libertinism to notions of absolutist power – to name but a few of the seventeenth-century examples which are important for my investigation.⁹ In addition, my use of the term ‘culture’ follows recent calls for an integrated approach to cultural analysis which combines not only signifying practices but also social and bodily activities as well as artefacts. Both elements are not linked by simple causal relations but nevertheless interact and converge. One of the aims of this study is therefore to uncover how both these aspects work together without reducing the one to the other.¹⁰

In contrast to the concept of exchange developed by Stephen Greenblatt, my work is based on actual instances of exchange, not merely symbolic ones.¹¹ In this study, I present cases of exchange or transfer which can be documented in the historical sense. Simultaneously, I have paid particular attention to the representation and reflection of such exchanges in order to elucidate the mutual dependency of both. Following recent demands that cultural exchange studies should involve a wide range of sources, not merely written texts, I have also included images, often not merely for the sake of illustration but also as representations which merit detailed analysis in their own right.

The Role and Function of Texts

But to return, for the time being, to texts and their main function as the cultural agents and products which link the material and the immaterial in processes of cultural exchange. Two related questions come to mind here: firstly, how does the immaterial affect the material? And secondly, what impact does the material have on the immaterial? On the simplest level, texts of whatever description document cultural exchange, e.g. because in them we find lists stating that in 1669, 6,408 pounds of wrought silk were imported from France.¹² On a more complex level, texts represent cultural exchange, for instance because their authors have adopted and adapted foreign settings, characters or genres, manners, and conversational practices, as was common in many Restoration comedies which abound with French characters. And finally, authors and characters in texts may reflect on this kind of representation and on cultural transfer on a meta-level, as John Dryden’s alter ego Neander, for example, famously does in Of Dramatick Poesie: An Essay (1668) which is discussed in Chapter 4.

Creative Appropriation

Virtually all theorists of cultural exchange stress the importance of ‘creative appropriation’ of other cultures.¹³ The texts which pave the way for such an ‘active process of assimilation and transformation’ are an essential factor.¹⁴ In most cases, texts fulfil all these functions at one and the same time – documentation, representation, and reflection upon cultural exchange. Perhaps fictional texts in the widest sense are the most interesting since they are usually written with less specific aims, are often more complex, tend to allow multiple readings, and with their creative capacity open up new possibilities when compared to non-fiction texts, which were written for quite different purposes and are therefore more useful as documents but less valuable as representations. Whichever function an individual text has, the focus adopted here has allowed me to explore ‘speech and writing as historical activities’ as part of my research on cultural exchange between England and France.¹⁵

Text and Context

One more word on the relationship between texts and contexts is perhaps called for here. In spite of developments which consider everything to be part of discourse, I would like to uphold the difference between the textual and the non-textual. I am of course aware that it is difficult to access the non-textual, since our main sources are verbal and to a lesser extent, visual – in other words the non-textual, non-discursive world is mediated precisely by texts and images and there is no other possibility (apart from studying artefacts) to access the past. However, it is not necessary to believe with Ranke that we can determine wie es eigentlich gewesen, nor does one need to uphold the sanctity of facts as ‘out there, somewhere’. But it is possible to distinguish between an event which occurred in the past and its representation. This perspective allows me to analyse the specific qualities of the verbal or visual strategies by which the event is represented without confusing this text or picture with the event itself. The distinction is vital because without it, one cannot understand the specific functions of texts and images, let alone find contexts and reasons why they were written in the way they were in the first place.¹⁶

The Role of Reference

In seventeenth-century literature, the role of reference is especially important. Literary texts are of course symbolic constructions and simply searching for indications of historical occurrences or figures is highly unsatisfactory and not really worthy of scholarly attention. However, the extent to which references to the world outside the text is considered normal or simply expected differs from period to period. The manner in which this relation between the text and the extra-textual world is arranged is particularly prone to change. It is therefore necessary to remain aware of the role of reference as well as of the particular shape it takes in a given period. Satirical texts for instance often touch directly upon current affairs and it is quite obvious that even the most accomplished piece of writing – for example John Dryden’s play Marriage à-la-Mode (1671–1672) – can be read as a comment on historical developments such as the Restoration of the monarchy. No analysis of the play should stop there, but ignoring probable audience responses provoked by such allusions would be equally limiting. What I am therefore aiming at is the combination of both: an awareness of the specif...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• A Note on Dates
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Theories of Cultural Exchange
• 2 A wise and happy mediator? Queen Henrietta Maria as Cultural Ambassador
• 3 So much æmulacion, poverty, and the vices of swearing, drinking, and whoring: Charles II and Anglo-French Culture at the Restoration
• 4 Vanquishing with our pens as our ancestors have with their swords: Textual and Visual Representations of Cultural Exchange
• 5 Summary and Outlook
• Bibliography
• Index