The space of appearance emerges from the practice of speech and action in the presence of others. Although it predates the public sphere as a formal construction, it exists in the context of a particular place. With the transformation of the ancien regime and the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere, the meaning of public and private was obscured by the rise of the 'social.' The public realm was transformed from a space of disclosure to a realm defined by the necessities of survival---a process by which speech and action lost much of their former power. In the spectacular relations of the ancien regime, public ritual revolved around the royal bed. Through the analogy of language and architecture, seventeenth-century aristocratic women defined new patterns of social practice. In the convergence of the spectacular relations of the court and the world of letters, a space of appearance arose. At the turn of the century, Salon discourse moved from the daybed to the sofa of Rococo salons. Responding to emerging dichotomies, discourse, architecture and Salon practice took on gendered implications. Its decline as a space of appearance coincided with the emergence of the boudoir. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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