Storia moderna queer? Considerazioni a partire dalla serie Versailles.

Abstract

The article discusses the French-Canadian television series Versailles (three seasons for a total of 30 episodes, 2015–2018), a period drama with close ties to 17th- and 18th-century sources (Saint-Simon, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mme de Montespan, Mme de Sévigné and, above all, the letters of the Princess Palatine, the second wife of one of the protagonists). The series is based on events set in the newly built Palace of Versailles, relating to the personal and political life and affairs of Louis XIV, his family, the court, ministers and many other related figures. Real-life characters are joined by fictional ones. Among the former are the Sun King, his brother Philippe d'Orléans, known as Monsieur, who was homosexual and polyamorous, his sisters-in-law (successive wives of the latter) Henrietta of England and Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, Louis's wife, Maria Theresa of Habsburg, his favourites M.me de Montespan and M.me de Maintenon, and Monsieur's main lover, the Chevalier de Lorraine. The most important fictional characters are the policeman/spy Marchal, the female doctor Claudine Masson, and the sorceress Madame Agathe. The events narrated all really happened, but the plot also draws on news and gossip from contemporaries, as well as plausible but fictional hypotheses. The essay questions the use of evidence and possibility and the categories of empathy and distance in visual narratives, focusing on the category of queerness and its relevance, both in the artistic invention of the video series and in the real historical context in which they are set. The serial dimension, which is particularly important for the articulation of historical themes, and more generally cinematic narratives, confirms itself, as historian Natalie Zemon Davis has stated, as a historiographical laboratory that uses imagination to test historical possibilities