"Moliere's anticlerical comedy Tartuffe is the unique prism through which Sheryl Kroen views postrevolutioanry France in the years of the Restoration. Following the lead of the French men and women who turned to this anticlerical play in the 1820s to make sense of their world, Kroen exposes the crisis of legitimacy defining the regime in these years and demonstrates how the people of the time made steps toward a democratic resolution to this crisis.".

"Kroen re-creates the atmosphere of Restoration France and at the same time brings major nineteenth-century themes into focus: memory and commemoration, public and private spheres, politics and religion, anticlericalism, and the formation of democratic ideologies and practices.

Of value to anyone interested in the complicated process of how political legitimacy is constituted, both from above and below, Kroen's book will be welcomed not only by modern French historians but also by scholars of revolution, comparative monarchy and democracy, political theory, and religion, and by specialists on theater and cultural practices."--BOOK JACKET.