Court Cultures, Body Cultures: Practices, Norms and Representations of the Body in European Courts prior to the French Revolution
This programme will bring together historians of court life and historians of physical appearance on an important but relatively unknown subject, revisiting issues raised by Marcel Mauss on the techniques of the body, and those raised by Norbert Elias on court society, and will include recent thinking on the start of personal grooming and the obsession with hygiene.
The programme’s originality lies in the fact that it considers the full process of cultural production from creator to “consumer”, as well the norms laid down by various opinion makers. It is also unusual in its scope, which speculates as to why this process took such a long time, and looks at the European dimension. The programme will also examine sources that are rarely, or at least not routinely, used: normative documents, series of archives and collections of objects, etc.
Team
Project leader: Bruno Laurioux, Professor of Medieval History at the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines;
Étienne Anheim, lecturer in Medieval History at the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines;
Jean-Patrice Boudet, Professor of Medieval History at the Université d’Orléans and Director of the laboratoire Savours (Savoirs et pouvoirs de l’Antiquité à nos Jours);
Thalia Brero, senior lecturer in Modern History at the Université de Lausanne;
Mathieu da Vinha, senior research officer, Scientific Director of the Centre de recherche du château de Versailles;
Colin Jones, Professor of Modern History at the Queen Mary University, London, England;
Catherine Lanoë, lecturer in Modern History at the Université d’Orléans, attached to the laboratoire Savours;
Marilyn Nicoud, lecturer in Modern History at the École normale supérieure Lettres et sciences humaines de Lyon;
Marie-France Noël-Waldteufel, senior research officer at the Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée – MuCEM –and at the Centre de recherche du château de Versailles;
Agostino Paravicini, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland;
María de los Ángeles Perez Samper, Professor of Modern History at the University of Barcelona, Spain;
Eva Pibiri, assistant lecturer in Medieval History at the Université de Lausanne;
Georges Vigarello, Director of Studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.
This programme has had the financial support of the GDRE (European research group) Court Cultures and Body Cultures (C3B), directed by Marilyn Nicoud, member of the École française de Rome, from 2008 to 2011. Find out more about the GDRE.
Productions
International symposium Court Cultures, Body Cultures (7-9 December 2006 at the palace of Versailles).
Publication of papers from the symposium Court Cultures, Body Cultures (directed by Catherine Lanoë, de Mathieu da Vinha and Bruno Laurioux) at the Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne (PUPS).
Uploading data extracts taken as part of the research programme at the French National Archives, by Florence Bruyant and Nicolas Wetzl, under the heading Corpus raisonnés on our website.
