Passing On: Dynastic Succession and the King's Body in French Tragedy (1635--1750).

Finally, in chapter 4, I show how in the eighteenth century the king's body is reduced to its mere physicality. Voltaire turns to royal ghosts, imposters, and tombs, transforming the king's body into a prop or special effect, or else he resorts to melodrama in an effort to breathe new life into a royal body that has lost its symbolic power, and therefore, its hold on the imagination. Defined by his aging body, the king is stripped of his tragic dignity and comes to resemble a character closer to the comedic genre. Hence, the lessons of the king's body are of great literary as well as political significance. As long as the king's body is fertile political ground, the tragic genre flourishes; tragedy falters when the political symbolism that had given meaning to the royal body in the seventeenth century can no longer inspire vibrant tragic scenarios.