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Sto caricando le informazioni... Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris (2010)di Robert Darnton
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Darnton has ably mined the available evidence surrounding the 1749 investigation and string of arrests for sedition known as the "Affair of the Fourteen" and produced a remarkable analysis of a subversive Parisian public discourse that openly attacked the king, his mistress, new taxes, and an unpopular peace treaty. Darnton lucidly reconstructs a world where information traveled through poems and songs set to familiar melodies; he reminds us that our world of instant communication, tweets, and 24-hour news cycles is not as distinctive as we may believe. With rich end matter that includes the lyrics of poems and songs as well as a link to a superb recording of some of the songs by cabaret artist Helene Delavault, this interdisciplinary piece is highly recommended for serious students across the humanities as well as readers with an interest in 18th-century French culture and politics. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)944.361034History and Geography Europe France and region Champagne; Ile de France; Lorraine Île-de-France ParisClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Throughout the book, Darnton allows us to peer inside his research methods and puts into writing the questions he asked himself as he carried out his own investigations into the police's dogged pursuit of those circulating the scandalous verses. By attempting to "reconstruct orality," (which he calls the "the most important missing element" in the history of communication - p. 2), Darnton suggests that we can (to the extent possible) "uncover a complex communication network and study the way information circulated in a semiliterate society" (p. 3).
In this slim volume (just 145 pages of text, followed by much end-matter, discussed below) Darnton offers up not only an account of the Affair of the Fourteen (how it proceeded and how it turned out), but also (widening the scope) contextual chapters on the political and social climate in France that led to the poems' production and spread, fascinating capsule-treatments of musical culture in eighteenth-century Paris (most notably the "street-singing") and how new lyrics laid atop old tunes (I love his phrase "aural palimpsest" for this) made the rapid infiltration of the poems and songs possible.
Darnton also admits the difficulties with the type of work he's trying to do with this book, noting that determining the actual public perceptions and impact of these verses in their own time is inherently tricky, since the much the evidence historians would want to be able to make a strong argument about the importance of this affair is simply lost to us. And he points out the dangers in reading proto-Revolutionary sentiments into these verses; while they do poke fun at (or even encourage the assassination of) the royal family, they should be seen "not as a symptom of things to come but rather as one of those rare incidents that, if adequately examined, reveal the underlying determinants of events" (p. 140).
I've heard Darnton speak several times about his desire to see historical works "enhanced" by supporting documentation and other materials, and he has certainly followed his own advice in this work. By supplementing the text with the texts of the poems which led to the Affair of the Fourteen, short contextual essays on various aspects of the book, and by an electronic caberet which features recordings of several of the tunes referred to in the text, Darnton has provided a fine example usefulness of enhanced texts (provided, of course, that the publisher maintains the website, &c.).
As usual, Darnton has found a good story, and told it well. By pulling at the loose threads of this seemingly unimportant episode, Darnton "reveals the way an information society operated when information spread by word of mouth and poetry carried messages among ordinary people, very effectively and long before the Internet" (p. 145).
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-review-poetry-and-police.html ( )