Patronage in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France
Sharon Kettering
Sharon Kettering, Patronage in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France. Aldershot, U.K. and Burlington, Ver. : Ashgate, 2002. vi + 286 p. $105.95. ISBN 0-86078-881-4.
Extrait du compte rendu de Stuart Carroll, University of York
Sharon Kettering is the queen of early modern patronage studies, and this welcome re-publication of eleven essays on the subject, all written in the decade following her ground-breaking synthesis Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France, allows us to pay homage to her research, to evaluate where the historiography currently stands, and to see what issues require further exploration. Unlike many of the Varorium reprints, the eleven articles reproduced here have a strong intellectual and thematic coherence. The first section contains four essays dealing with the historiography, language, and function of patronage and clientage ; section two consists of two studies outlining the role of female patronage ; the third section has two studies detailing the development of brokerage ; and the final section has three case studies that constitute a narrative of the changing structure of clientage from the Wars of Religion to the reign of Louis XIV (see list of essays below).