SOURCE: Cropper, Corry L. “Playing at Monarchy: le jeu de paume in Literature of Nineteenth-Century France.” French Review 75, no. 4 (March 2002): 720-29.

In the following essay, Cropper determines the symbolic significance of the French game le jeu de paume in “The Venus d'Ille.”

For centuries le jeu de paume, a precursor to our modern day tennis, was the exclusive cultural and social property of France's nobility. In the fourteenth century, Charles V, by royal decree, forbade anyone not of noble birth to play the game. From then until the fall of the monarchy, bourgeois and commoners indulging in the noble privilege of playing the jeu de paume were to receive stiff penalties, or what historian Jacques Fournier refers to as “sévérités” (11). While the interdiction against playing le jeu de paume proved impossible to enforce (like so many of the noble privileges), the King's message, at least...