The Allure of the Archives
Arlette Farge
Abstract
Le Goût de l'archive is widely regarded as a historiographical classic. While combing through two-hundred-year-old judicial records from the Archives of the Bastille, the author was struck by the extraordinarily intimate portrayal they provided of the lives of the poor in pre-Revolutionary France, especially women. She was seduced by the sensuality of old manuscripts and by the revelatory power of voices otherwise lost. This book conveys the exhilaration of uncovering hidden secrets and the thrill of venturing into new dimensions of the past. Originally published in 1989, this classic work com ... More
Keywords: Archives of the Bastille, pre-Revolutionary France, women, archival research, French
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 | Print ISBN-13: 9780300176735 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: January 2014 | DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300176735.001.0001 |
