Le Promeneur a Paris au XVIIIe siecle

Abstract

The Parisian boulevards are so indissolubly linked with the modernisation of the city during the Second Empire, that it is good to have a reminder that they predate Haussmann and Napoleon III by nearly two centuries. As Laurent Turcot shows, in his stimulating, learned and readable account of the Parisian pedestrian in the long eighteenth century, the boulevard was a Louis-Quatorzian invention, imposed on the city ramparts in 1670 following the Sun King's decision to demilitarise his capital in the light of the events of the Fronde. Other French cities would follow the Parisian lead. Boulevards form a central element in Turcot's account, which focuses on the way in which the social practice and everyday necessity of walking both shaped and was shaped by the built environment, with lasting effects on representations of the capital. The theatralisation of urban space under the baroque monarchy gave surprisingly short shrift to the act of walking. The social and political elite considered mobility within Paris in terms of use of the carriage, a relatively recent invention in fact that reinforced hierarchies of wealth and taste. In terms of social visibility, post-Renaissance books of civility – which Turcot uses to particularly good effect – had depreciated the street, which the elite was happy to leave to the lower orders. As late as 1777, the Italian writer Caraccioli was commenting how the nobility in Paris was only just beginning to get used to the idea that they could descend from their carriages and use their legs. Particularly favoured elite locations in the late seventeenth century were the Cours-la-Reine and gardens à la française which were in theory public, but entry to which were strictly policed. Here the preening honnête homme could perform a comprehensive set of socially-graded behaviours and bodily postures before the obligatorily genteel audience. Here one promenaded lightly; walking was what others did in the street.