Australian Journal of French Studies

Abstract

Louis XIV is one of the most captivating figures in French history despite his myth sitting uneasily alongside a modern Republican France. Louis XIV’s rarely read memoirs provide unique insight into the monarch’s role, demonstrating the tension between God-given right and the day-to-day duties of being a king. Novelist Claire de Duras used the memoirs to compile Pensées de Louis XIV (1827), a collection of seventy selected quotations. This article shows how Duras attempts to reconcile past and present, maintaining the mythical aura of the monarch while also portraying Louis XIV as a figure that might appeal to a post-Revolutionary, post-Imperial society.