Reviews for The World of the Favourite

The average rating for The World of the Favourite based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-28 00:00:00 Jasmin Martinez Useful and learned collection of essays on the nature of royal favourites in early modern Europe. Taking a postmodernist slant, there is little of narrative detail and the collection assumes a reasonable degree of knowledge from the reader, making some chapters a little dense. As a whole, it looks at the 'unique' rise - and fall - of favourites c. 1550-1650, drawing out parallels and differences between countries, political systems, and times in an attempt to find a better understanding of the phenomenon. Alongside this, it looks at the language and symbolism used to represent favourites, both by themselves and by contemporaries, historiographical trends, types of favourite, and cultural influences. Individual chapters consider these questions either by comparing and contrasting several favourites (mainly with reference to Buckingham, Olivares, and Richelieu, but casting the net across Europe) or through biographical example of just one individual. As always with edited volumes, some chapters are more relevant, and better written, than others. Of particular note in this book are Croft's piece on Cecil, Worden's look at representations of favourites on the stage, and Wootton's study of the rules of friendship through the eyes of Francis Bacon. Elliot and Brockliss provide a comprehensive introduction and conclusion.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-05-07 00:00:00 Christopher Slama A good collection of essays from a conference on the topic. These kind of collections are always mixed but this one was pretty good. Some I found more dull, like the one on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but that could have been my personal lack of interest. There's a section on images of the favourite--on the stage, in art, etc. There are also discussions of what makes a favourite a favourite and not something else (a bureaucrat, a minister).