Texte remanié de: Mémoire universitaire--Histoire--Paris--Institut d'histoire de la Révolution française.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Paris, 1912. / Includes index.

Thesis advisor: Ourida Mostefai / This thesis addresses the role of dress in the blurring of social class lines in pre-revolutionary France. The Ancien Régime had a set code for costume, in accordance with rank and birth. I outline this particular order, and the resulting disorder from this social structure through factual evidence and literary examples. The second part will discuss the creation and practice of fashion in the 18th century, leading up to the Estates General of 1789. This building significance of appearance in France made dress both a political and social tool that became incredibly useful during the French Revolution. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Romance Languages and Literature. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

My dissertation examines visual representations of children and childhood in French art from the 1750s until the first decades of the nineteenth century. This period in France is distinct because of the sweeping social and political changes with which images of children and childhood were in dialogue, including the redefinition of bourgeois familial relationships, new medical discoveries that influenced how artists interpreted the human mind and body, the chaos of the French Revolution, and the rise of Napoleon and his codification of the laws of nature. By 1750, Enlightenment thinkers and social reformers viewed the education, nurturing, and protection of innocent children as among the fundamental moral acts that defined humanity. Childhood, once considered insignificant, became a special period of human development that women were naturally suited to cultivate. Amidst the corruption of the Ancien régime, the violence of the French Revolution, and the instability of the state, children were unthreatening emblems of social regeneration and hope. Throughout my dissertation, I explore how the complex written and visual language of nature informed artists’ conceptions of children and childhood during the long eighteenth century. Opposing themes of nature’s wildness, containment, wholesomeness, and mysteriousness in different forms paralleled discourses on children and child-rearing. Prominent eighteenth-century artists like Chardin, Boucher, Fragonard, Greuze, Vigée Lebrun, Marguerite Gérard, and others analyzed contemporary scientific, philosophical, artistic, and pedagogical movements to depict children naturally. Even when Romantic artists like Géricault or Prud’hon imagined nature as a dangerous or mystical entity, the emphasis on the unique truthfulness of a child’s character continued to be a subject of great interest, especially when the scientific community recognized child psychology and pediatrics as their own fields of medical study in the early nineteenth century. Compared to studies that have broadly surveyed the ideologies of childhood as reflected in art, my dissertation investigates the socio-historical contexts in which representations of children were commissioned, produced, and displayed. Why did revolutionary events, artists, and patrons appropriate images of the enlightened child? I propose that representations of children from this period offer indisputable symbolic value: they functioned emblematically to advance the morality of a woman’s reputation, or to philosophically communicate an idea about the state of French society during key moments of social and political upheaval. Through a study of images of pastoral children for Madame de Pompadour, representations of bourgeois children with pets, portrayals of the royal children during the French Revolution, and Romantic depictions of children in portraiture, my dissertation traces the socio-historical implications of the representations of children and childhood to make way for new interpretations of artworks.

No / Munro Price has meticulously researched the mood, atmosphere and personalities behind the palace walls. At the heart of this research is a cache of letters that sheds new light on the lives of the royals, as the monarchy was gradually stripped of its power and revolutionary fervour called for their execution. The central character in this new evidence is the Baron de Breteuil, Louis's ambassador in exile, who orchestrated doomed escape plans and co-ordinated the international response to the revolution.This new book reassesses a perennially interesting period of history and will shed fresh insight into one of the real tuning points in European history

La tesi vuole evidenziare il carattere continuativo che l’influenza francese ha esercitato sulla moda curiale nel XVIII, fino allo scoppiare delle Rivoluzione. I primi tre capitoli, sono necessari per comprendere la nascita di questa fortuna. Lo scontro tra corona francese e corona spagnola si è caratterizzato nel XVII secolo anche come scontro di codici vestimentari. Il perdurare delle “divise” di corte maschile e femminile nel XVIII perfezionate durante la seconda metà del regno di Luigi XIV è funzionale al mantenimento del ruolo guida: riconoscendo la necessità di uniformarsi agli abiti prescritti dal cerimoniale francese, le corti si appropriano non solo di un codice vestimentario, ma di una particolare immagine della monarchia. Il monopolio francese sulla moda si basa su un’autorità che deriva innanzitutto da quella conseguita nel secolo precedente. Alla fine del Settecento il rifiuto per gli abiti strettamente di corte che coincide con la creazione di alternative che possano soddisfare l’esigenza dell’apparire curiale segue una matrice quasi strettamente femminile: capacità della corte francese è quelle di elaborare spunti provenienti da altre culture e modificarle in chiave nazionale. / The thesis wants to focus on the continuity of the French influence on the evolution of European fashion during the eighteenth century to the Revolution. The first three chapters are indispensable to understand the origin of this success. The fight between the French and the Spanish court during the sixteenth century was also a fight for the supremacy of their own fashion style. The persistence in the eighteenth century of the court dress code for man and women that was elaborated during the reign of Louis XIV was functional to the maintenance of the guide role of the French court in Europe. At the end of the century, the refusal of strictly court dresses for new kind of clothes is peculiar of the women living at the court, but the French court has the ability to invent new fashions using ideas coming from other countries.

Ce mémoire rend compte d'un long processus qui trouve son origine dans le travail du théâtre : décors, costumes, textes, voix, acteurs et représentations, processus qui puise dans les caprices, les anecdotes, les vérités et les mensonges de la grande histoire. Il fait état de la recherche qui a mené à la réalisation d'une vidéo mettant en scène le lent déshabillage d'un personnage célèbre, Marie-Antoinette d'Autriche, et à l'exposition recontextualisant les costumes et les accessoires utilisés pendant le tournage. En plus de mettre Marie-Antoinette en relation avec sa mère, Marie-Thérèse de Habsbourg, ce récit vidéographique a fait appel à d'autres personnages qui portent le récit: les Archivistes, les Bornes et les Africaines. À travers ces personnages secondaires, le corps du personnage-actrice Marie-Antoinette, surexploité par la culture populaire, est décortiqué, classifié, classé, reclassé et conceptualisé avant d'être utilisé comme point d'ancrage d'une création théâtrale. Dans la construction de cette histoire, le costume, réel et conceptuel, a servi de trame au texte, qui a ensuite guidé la gestuelle de l'actrice une fois le costume endossé. À travers un effeuillage menant au corps de l'actrice, le présent texte fait, couche après couche, état de cette réflexion sur le corps mis en scène et sur les capacités et limites de celui-ci à raconter une expérience sensible. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : apparence, image, corps, vêtement, peinture, vidéo, théâtre, costume, jeu.

No description available.

This interdisciplinary thesis belongs to Marie Antoinette studies. The contemporary dissonant commodification of the controversial historical character of the last Queen of France, detected at her former home, Petit Trianon, drives the course of the thesis research. Considering the complexity and controversy of the subject, the thesis seeks to make a contribution to extant scholarship by clarifying important modern history issues through a fresh approach: by using art history as an indicator in assessing the historical truth of the narrative of Petit Trianon, the residence identified as home to the last Queen of France. The thesis examines Petit Trianon and Marie Antoinette in the context of four major narratives - the historical, cinematic, architectural and heritage narratives - relevant to the contemporary heritage interpretation of Petit Trianon as well as its visitor perceptions. In addition to sourcing evidence for the arguments originating in art history information, the thesis relies on the data collection provided by a tailor-made survey for the topic, placing the results in the wider context of a hermeneutical interpretation of data found in either history or contemporary popular culture. The array of Marie Antoinette’s images detected by the analysis charts the commodification of this historical character at Petit Trianon: its production and consumption. It is through the assessment of this commodification that the present thesis reveals the misconceptions surrounding the historical character best known as Marie Antoinette. The thesis argues that the true role of the last Queen of France was successfully obscured through juxtaposition with her perception by the French collective memory. In other words, the perception of Marie Antoinette had subverted historical truth. Furthermore, the commodification of her historical character is perpetuated in an endless chain of representations fuelled by postmodern consumerism.