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Discipline and Invention: the Fete in France
XV-XVIII Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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Any historical reflection of the fête (or feast) must depart from the observation of its actual conditions of subsistence, in order to understand the veritable “festive explosion” that has marked historical production this last decade. Although it is not specifically historical, the emergence of the fête (and in particular of the ancient feast) as a preferential object of study, leads one in effect to wonder about the reasons that have brought about that, in a given moment, an entire scientific class, in this case the French historians, has felt attracted by a theme which until then was treated only in folklorist collections. Seemingly, three reasons, that pertain as much to the recognized function of the historical discipline as to its internal evolution, may be cited. It is clear, above all, that the increased research into the ancient feast constitutes a sort of compensation, as a means of understanding, to the disappearing system of civilization in which the fête had, or rather, is considered as having had, a central role. The historical analysis is therefore charged to explain, in its idiom and with its technique, the nostalgia evoked by a present which has eliminated the fête defined as an act of community participation. On these grounds it then becomes possible to rediscover one of the major functions assigned—implicitly or explicitly—to history today: to restore to the sphere of knowledge a vanished world of which contemporary society feels the heritage, but as an unfaithful heir. That the operation of understanding is difficult to separate from the fabrication of an imaginary past collectively desired, is, in the end, insignificant, unless it is meant to underline those themes that, by being the most neglected by our present age, become the most symptomatic of a world we have lost. The fête, vidently, is one of these.
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- Copyright © 1980 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
* This text was presented at the interdisciplinary and international conference La Fête en Question, organized by L'Université de Montréal in April 1979.
1 G. Duby, Le dimanche de Bouvines, 27 juillet 1214, Paris, 1973, in particular pp. 13-14.
2 E. Le Roy Ladurie, Le Carnaval de Romans. De la Chandeleur au mercredi des Cendres, 1579-1580, Paris, 1979, p. 408.
3 A. Dupront, "Formes de la culture des masses: de la doléance politique au pélerinage panique (XVIIIe -XXe siècle)" Niveaux de culture et groupes sociaux, Paris, 1967, pp. 149-167.
4 M. de Certau, "Une culture très ordinaire," Esprit, October 1978, pp. 3-26.
5 J.-B. Thiers, Traité des Jeux et des Divertissements, Paris, 1696 and Traité des Superstitions selon l'Écriture Sainte, les Décrets des Conciles et les sentiments des Saints Pères et des Théologiens, Paris 1679, second edition in four volumes, Paris, 1697-1704. On the latter text, see J. Lebrun, "Le Traité des Superstitions d Jean-Baptiste Thiers, contribution à l'ethnographie de la France du XVIIe siècle," Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l'Ouest, 1976, pp. 443-465 and R. Chartier and J. Revel, "Le paysan, l'ours et saint Augustin," Proceedings of the Conference La découverte de la France au XVII siècle, to be published.
6 Y. M. Berce, Fête et révolte. Des mentalités populaires du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1976, pp. 170-176.
7 J.C. Schmitt, "Jeunes et danse des chevaux de bois. Le folklore méridional dans la littérature des exempla (XIIIe -XIVe siècle)," Cahiers de Fanjeaux, N. 11, Toulouse, 1976, pp. 127-158.
8 J. Delumeau (under the direction of), La mort des Pays de Cocagne. Comportements collectifs de la Renaissance à l'âge classique, Paris, 1976, pp. 14-29.
9 J.-B. Thiers, Traité des Jeux, op. cit., pp. 440-451.
10 J.-B. du Tilliot, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la fête des fous qui se faisait autrefois dans plusieurs églises, cited by Y.M. Berce, op. cit., p. 140.
11 J.-B. Thiers, Traité des Jeux, op. cit., pp. 331-341. Like the dance, carnival masks are doubly to be condemned: they disguise the body of man, and consequently blaspheme against his Creator. They tolerate ribaldry of the most dangerous kind both for the good order of society and for its morals. Two texts, as proof: first the synodal constitutions of the Diocese of Annecy (1773 edition): "We finally exhort Their Lordships the Archpriests, Curés and Vicars, especially in the boroughs and the cities, to eradicate the abuse of the masquerades which are nothing but a shameful left-over of Paganism. To succeed they must rise against it in their sermons and teaching, especially after Epiphany until Lent; they must demonstrate its ridicule and danger, showing the people that such disorder is injurious to God whose image is disfigured; that it dishonours the members of J.C. by lending to them burlesque and out-of-place characters; and that it encourages licentiousness by facilitating that which impairs modesty" (cited in R. Devos and C. Joisten, Moeurs et coulumes de la Savoie du Nord au XIXe siècle. Uenquête de Mgr. Rendu, Annecy and Grenoble, 1978, p. 120); secondly the preamble of a decree of the Magistrat de Lille in 1681: "Considering that each year some time before Lent such disorder and inconveniences occur, detrimental to the welfare of souls and the public good, caused by the licentiousness which many people of one or the other sex employ in going through cities masked or otherwise disguised…" (cited from A. Lottin, Chavatte, ouvrier lillois. Un contemporain de Louis XIV, Paris, 1979, p. 322).
12 J. Delumeau, Le catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire, Paris, 1971, p. 259-261.
13 These superstitions are reported in J.-B. Thiers, Traité des Superstitions, op. cit., vol. I, ed. 1712, p. 298 and vol. IV, ed. 1727, p. 404.
14 T. Tackett, Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France. A Social and Political Study of the Curés in a Diocese of Dauphiné, 1750-1791, Princeton, 1977, pp. 210-215 and D. Julia, "La reforme post-tridentine en France d'après Is procès-verbaux des visites pastorales: ordre et résistances," La Società reli giosa nell'età moderna, Naples, 1973, pp. 311-415, in particular pp. 384-388.
15 M. Grinberg, "Carnaval et société urbaine, XIVe -XVIe siècle. le royaume dans la ville," Ethnologie française, 1974, N. 3, pp. 215-243.
16 M. Grinberg, ibid., pp. 229-230.
17 The fundamental materials for one such study are collected in the catalogue Entrées royales et fêtes populaires à Lyon du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, Municipal Library of Lyon, Lyon, 1970.
18 N.Z. Davis, "The Reasons of Misrule," Society and Culture in Early Modern France, Stanford, 1975, pp. 97-123.
19 Entrées royales et fêtes…, op. cit., pp. 49-50. Two pieces cited, one by N.Z. Davis, art. cit., n. 70, the other in the catalogue Entrées royales et fêtes…, No. 22, permit one to see into one of these confrèries joyeuses, reunited in 1517 rue Mercière.
20 N.Z. Davis, "Printing and the People," op. cit., p. 218.
21 R. Chartier, "Une académie avant les lettres patentes. Une approche de la sociabilité des notables lyonnais à la fin du règne de Louis XIV," Marseille, No. 101, 1975, pp. 115-120.
22 On the rose festivals, W.F. Everdell, "The Rosière Movement, 1766- 1789. A Clerical Precursor of the Revolutionary Cults," French Historical Studies vol. IX, No. 1, 1975, pp. 23-36, and M. De Certeau, D. Julia and J. Revel, "La beauté du mort: le concept de ‘culture populaire'," Politique aujourd'hui, December 1970, pp. 3-23.
23 M. Vovelle, Les métamorphoses de la fête en Provence de 1750 à 1820, Paris, 1976, pp. 94-90.
24 M. Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire 1789-1799, Paris, 1976, p. 9.
25 These two texts are cited and commented upon by B. Baczko, Lumières de l'utopie, Paris, 1978, pp. 244-249.
26 B. Baczko, op. cit., chap. V, and J. Ehrard, "Les Lumières et la fête," Les fêtes de la Révolution, Conference of Clermont-Ferrand (June 1974), Pro ceedings collected by J. Ehrard and P. Viallaneix, Paris, 1977, pp. 27-44.
27 D. Fabre and C. Camberoque, La fête en Languedoc. Regards sur le carnaval aujourd'hui, Toulouse, 1977.
28 D. Fabre and B. Traimond, "Contrôles sociaux et dynamique des rituels. Les charivaris de Gascogne occidentale (XIXe and XXe siècles)" communication to the conference Le charivari (April 1977), Paris, Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires, to be published.
29 D. Fabre and C. Camberoque, op. cit., p. 171.
30 C. Gaignebet, Le Carnaval, Paris, 1974.
31 D. Fabre, "Le Monde du Carnaval," Annales E.S.C., 1976, pp. 389-406 (about C. Gainebet's book).
32 M. Agulhon, Pénitents et Francs-Maçons de l'ancienne Provence, Paris, 1968, pp. 43-64.
33 E. Le Roy Ladurie, op. cit.; L.S. Van Doren, "Revolt and reaction in the city of Romans, Dauphiné, 1579-1580," The Sixteenth Century Journal, 1974, pp. 71-100.
34 Cf. E. Cros, L'aristocrate et le Carnaval des Gueux. Etude sur le "Buseón de Quevedo," Montpellier, Etudes Sociocritiques, 1975.
35 M. Ozouf, op. cit., pp. 108-114.
36 M. Vovelle, op. cit., pp. 269-294.
37 M. Ozouf, op. cit., pp. 317-340.
38 B. Baczko, op. cit., pp. 280-282.
39 Robespierre, "Sur les rapports des idéees religieuses et morales avec les principes républicains et sur les fêtes nationales, 7 mai 1794," Textes choisis, vol. III, Paris, 1958, pp. 175-176.
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