New Books Network Claire Goldstein, "Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
Mar 24, 2026
Claire Goldstein, Professor of French and humanities scholar at UC Davis, studies seventeenth-century French literature and material culture. She traces how comets sparked social panic, periodical news-making, court spectacle, and ballets. The conversation highlights archival sleuthing, theater and publication networks, and how comet mania shaped the rise of state science and the Paris Observatory.
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How a Chance Archive Sparked a Book
- Claire Goldstein began the project after finding incidental mentions of people crowding bridges and streets to view the 1664–65 comet in Olivier D'Orfèvre's journal about the Fouquet trial.
- That accidental archival find grew into a file folder and then a focused study on two comets at pivotal moments in Louis XIV's reign, 1664–65 and 1680–81.
Comets As Cultural Catalysts Not Just Scientific Objects
- Goldstein frames the project around cultural responses, not as a history of science; she reads ballets, plays, institutions, and journalism to trace cometomanie rather than technical advances.
- She emphasizes the moment of scientific indecision before calculus made comet motion intelligible, keeping the phenomenon in a cultural and performative register.
Comet Gossip Reveals Social Preoccupations
- Observers asked positional questions (sublunar vs. celestial, how it moved) but many commentators were more fascinated by social behaviors and circulation around the comet.
- Goldstein reads plays and periodicals where characters pursue marriages, books, and social credit while the comet functions as a backdrop to social dramas.
