Vaux and Versailles
Book • 2007
In Vaux and Versailles Claire Goldstein investigates the cultural and material practices that shaped the transformation of French aristocratic landscapes into national symbols.
The book traces how appropriation, deliberate erasures, and accidental events contributed to the creation of the aesthetic and political narratives surrounding Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles.
Goldstein situates garden design, architecture, and court culture within broader processes of state formation and memory-making in early modern France.
She highlights the interplay of visual culture, spatial practices, and political power, revealing how built environments produce and obscure historical meanings.
The work combines archival research and visual analysis to show how these sites became foundational to modern French identity.
The book traces how appropriation, deliberate erasures, and accidental events contributed to the creation of the aesthetic and political narratives surrounding Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles.
Goldstein situates garden design, architecture, and court culture within broader processes of state formation and memory-making in early modern France.
She highlights the interplay of visual culture, spatial practices, and political power, revealing how built environments produce and obscure historical meanings.
The work combines archival research and visual analysis to show how these sites became foundational to modern French identity.
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Gina Stahm
Claire Goldstein, "Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
