Social Drama, Cultural Pragmatics, and Louis XIII's Performativity: "La Victoire du Phébus" (1617)

In 1617, Concino Concini, the regent Marie de Medici's powerful favori, was assassinated on his way into the Louvre courtyard upon order of the sixteen-year-old king Louis XIII. Immediately afterward, the anonymous La Victoire du Phébus appeared in Rouen, along with a multitude of other texts and images. This study employs theatrical semiotics and cultural pragmatics to read this little-known yet relevant performance-text. It argues that this mimetic representation of regal violence enters and contributes to the propagandistic network of power by legitimizing, endorsing, and celebrating the use of the early modern coup d'État as Louis's symbolic rite of passage.