Dance in the Renaissance : European Fashion, French Obsession

by Margaret M. McGowan

• ISBN13: 9780300115574
• ISBN10: 0300115571
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2008-12-02
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Dance was at the core of Renaissance social activity in France and had important connections with most major issues of the period. This finely illustrated book provides the first full account of the pivotal place and high status of dance in sixteenth-century French culture and society. Margaret M. McGowan examines the diverse forms of dance in the Renaissance, contemporary attitudes toward dance, and the light this throws on moral, political, and aesthetic concerns of the time. Among the subjects she covers are: expectations of dance; style, costume, music, and social coding; court dance versus social dancing; dance and the Valois dynasty; professional dancers, virtuosos, and choreographers; burlesque; opposition to dance; and dance and the people. Nearly one hundred illustrations, many of them rare, accompany the engrossing text.

Author Biography

Margaret M. McGowan is research professor of French at the University of Sussex and an internationally known scholar of sixteenth-century French culture. She is the author of The Vision of Rome in Late Renaissance France, published by Yale University Press.

Table of Contents

The status of the dance	p. 1
Discourses on dancing	p. 31
Making a ballet	p. 61
Forms of dancing	p. 91
Dance conquers the court I : Francois Ier and Henri II	p. 127
Dance conquers the court II : Catherine de Medicis and her sons	p. 151
Dancing in the country	p. 183
Dance as transformation	p. 209
The rise of the professional	p. 229
Conclusion	p. 244
Records of the dance in the French Renaissance : dances, mascarades and ballets, 1500-1600	p. 249
Notes	p. 260
Bibliography of works cited	p. 299
Index	p. 317
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