Jeffrey S. Ravel

Seating the Public: Spheres and Loathing in the Paris Theaters, 1777-1788

A surprising contradiction existed in the two most prestigious Parisian theaters at the beginning of the final decade of the Old Regime. While the performers of the Comedie-Fransaise and the Comedie-Italienne staged spectacles that were subsequently read and discussed throughout cosmopolitan Europe, over half the audience members at any given performance in their theaters stood for three to four hours in the pit, or parterre, watching the spectacle. Contemporaries described these viewing conditions as barbaric, feudal, and unhealthy. They pointed to the

Trois images de l'expulsion des comédiens italiens en 1697

Cet article analyse le dispositif visuel de trois images afin d’examiner les interpretations contemporaines de l’expulsion des Comediens italiens hors de Paris en 1697. Tandis que deux de ces images inscrivent la troupe dans le cadre de la politique culturelle de Louis XIV, la troisieme donne a voir ce qui sera le monde du XVIIIe siecle dans lequel le roi et sa Cour cessent d’etre l’arbitre decisif des modes theâtrales.

Husband-Killer, Christian Heroine, Victim: The Execution of Madame Tiquet, 1699

Abstract The case of Angélique-Nicole Carlier Tiquet, convicted of organizing a plot to assassinate her husband in 1699, prompts questions about histories of torture and public execution over the last several centuries. During the two-month trial that followed the assassination attempt against her husband, official inquiry and public opinion coalesced around the idea that Madame Tiquet was guilty. At least some observers came to believe that her crime represented a threat to husbands and paternal authority more generally throughout the kingdom. In the wake of her torture and public execution, which she endured so gracefully that many observers found themselves lamenting her death, male Catholic polemicists argued in print about the meanings of her demise, while one female Protestant writer, Anne Marguerite Petit du Noyer, asserted her innocence. Several years later, in the 1702 edition of his Dictionnaire historique et critique, Pierre Bayle cited the case in the context of a broader secular reflection on marital relations in morally corrupt societies. The affair that prompted these texts is fascinating precisely because it resists insertion into misleading histories of progress and civility, or ever-expanding statist surveillance of citizens.

The Coachman's Bare Rump: An Eighteenth-Century French Cover-Up

On 21 January 1763, a wealthy nobleman staged a performance of Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Devin de village at his Parisian townhouse. The soirée was attended by military and financial elites. After the curtain fell, several of the masters servants were joking with each other backstage. When the coachman dropped his trousers and displayed his buttocks to a young black page, the latter abruptly raised the curtain to expose the coachmans bare rump to the remaining elites in the room. Their master then called the neighborhood police to arrest the coachman. This article explores issues of social distinction, race, and state authority raised by this incident.