Who preceded whom? Who wore what? Which form of address should one use? One of the most striking aspects of the early modern period is the crucial significance that contemporaries ascribed to such questions. In this hierarchical world, status symbols did not simply mirror a pre-defined social and political order; rather, they operated as a key tool for defining and redefining identities, relations, and power. Centuries later, scholars face the twofold challenge of evaluating status interaction in an era where its open pursuit is no longer as widespread and legitimate, and of deciphering its highly sophisticated and often implicit codes. Status Interaction during the Reign of Louis XIV addresses this challenge by investigating status interaction - in dress as in address, in high ceremony and in everyday life - at one of its most important historical arenas: aristocratic society at the time of Louis XIV. By recovering actual practices on the ground based on a wide array of printed and manuscript sources, it transcends the simplistic view of a court revolving around the Sun King and reveals instead the multiple perspectives of contesting actors, stakes, and strategies. Demonstrating the wide-ranging implications of the phenomenon, macro-political as well as micro-political, this study provides a novel framework for understanding early modern action and agency.

About the Author
Giora Sternberg is Fellow and Tutor in History at Hertford College and Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Oxford. Previously, he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He holds a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford, and an MA in History and a BSc in Computer Science and Humanities from Tel Aviv University.

Reviews
Giora Sternberg has made an exceedingly impressive debut ... It will be an indispensable work on the political culture for anyone researching the governmental or elite social history of France for years to come, and also ... for those who will look at other states in the old regime period * Guy Rowlands, History *
The expression "status interaction" so cogently summarizes a crucial element of social and cultural reality that it will undoubtedly enter into the historiography, marking the success of this well-documented and richly suggestive study. * Matthew Vester, H-France Review *
scholarship of the very highest order ... This is one of these very rare books which might have been two or three times as long. It will require constant re-reading, so numerous and complex are its insights and so profound its importance * Hamish Scott, European History Quarterly *
successful in deciphering the language of the court, and most importantly, by testing its effect on the ground, and charting the consequences of such exchanges ... What emerges is an enriched view of court dynamics, as we are guided through the ever-shifting and malleable social world of the early modern courtier. Sternberg has also presented an impressive reading of sources and a dissection of a number of key aspects of status symbolism * Linda Kiernan, Reviews in History *
This is, without doubt, an important piece of scholarship ... [Sternberg] has a facility with language and phrasing which is not only clear and lucid but often enlivens the narrative ... a commendable achievement, which offers a new perspective on an old topic. * P. McCluskey, English Historical Review *
What Sternberg supplies are so many of the glorious details to understanding the fine mechanics of Louis XIV's Versailles and the court society. * Journal of Modern History *


Awards
Winner of Shortlisted for the 2015 Royal Historical Society Gladstone Prize.



Book Information
ISBN 9780199640348
Author Giora Sternberg
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 486g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 162mm * 21mm