In his Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, Fontenelle promised to pull aside the stage curtain and present the world as it really was. In the absolutist France of the time, court plays frequently presented grand illusions, deploying massive machinery and moving painted scenes to depict the heavens revolving around the Sun King, Louis XIV. To a contemporary viewer familiar with such works, it might well have been particularly thrilling to open up this engraving, tipped in and folded within the Fontenelle’s volume, and to see before her or his eyes a still grander stage set of the universe, full of many worlds, each revolving around their own suns.
Recommended further reading:
Apostolidès, Jean-Marie. Le roi-machine: spectacle et politique au temps de Louis XIV. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1981.
Burke, Peter. The Fabrication of Louis XIV. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.