Keith Reader
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789621044
- eISBN:
- 9781800341241
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789621044.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
A survey of the history of the Marais from the Middle Ages to the present day. No Parisian quartier has undergone such extraordinary changes of fortune – from riches to rags and back again – and the ...
More
A survey of the history of the Marais from the Middle Ages to the present day. No Parisian quartier has undergone such extraordinary changes of fortune – from riches to rags and back again – and the Introduction offers a succinct overview of these along with consideration of perhaps the book’s major methodological and theoretical question, what it means to write about a city. The area’s current incarnation as what its detractors might dub a historical and cultural theme park should not, it is argued, serve to obfuscate the protean fascination of its history. This is not a guide-book, despite which the Introduction provides a brief overview of the neighbourhood today, in particular its commercial and cultural resources.Less
A survey of the history of the Marais from the Middle Ages to the present day. No Parisian quartier has undergone such extraordinary changes of fortune – from riches to rags and back again – and the Introduction offers a succinct overview of these along with consideration of perhaps the book’s major methodological and theoretical question, what it means to write about a city. The area’s current incarnation as what its detractors might dub a historical and cultural theme park should not, it is argued, serve to obfuscate the protean fascination of its history. This is not a guide-book, despite which the Introduction provides a brief overview of the neighbourhood today, in particular its commercial and cultural resources.
Keith Reader
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789621044
- eISBN:
- 9781800341241
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789621044.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book explores the history and the vicissitudes of one of Paris’s most extraordinary areas, the Marais. Centrally located on the Right Bank, this neighbourhood was from the Middle Ages through to ...
More
This book explores the history and the vicissitudes of one of Paris’s most extraordinary areas, the Marais. Centrally located on the Right Bank, this neighbourhood was from the Middle Ages through to the eighteenth century the most fashionable in the city, headquarters of the nobility who endowed it with resplendent architecture. The Court’s move to Versailles and the Revolution of 1789 led to the quartier’s decline, so that in the nineteenth century and the earlier part of the twentieth it was in parlous shape, its fine buildings run down and often severely overcrowded. It escaped wholesale destruction in the post-War frenzy of modernization largely thanks to André Malraux, who as Culture Minister fostered the restoration of the area. Malraux’s efforts were, however, not immune from criticism, sometimes seen as a form of socio-economic cleansing with concomitant fossilization, and thus emblematic of the problems faced by a city which has always been torn between the preservation of its past and the need to adapt to social and historical change. The book focuses particularly on literary, cinematic and other artistic reproductions of the quartier, of which it attempts to provide a comprehensive overview, and foregrounds particularly its importance as home to and base of two highly significant minorities – the Jewish and the gay communities.Less
This book explores the history and the vicissitudes of one of Paris’s most extraordinary areas, the Marais. Centrally located on the Right Bank, this neighbourhood was from the Middle Ages through to the eighteenth century the most fashionable in the city, headquarters of the nobility who endowed it with resplendent architecture. The Court’s move to Versailles and the Revolution of 1789 led to the quartier’s decline, so that in the nineteenth century and the earlier part of the twentieth it was in parlous shape, its fine buildings run down and often severely overcrowded. It escaped wholesale destruction in the post-War frenzy of modernization largely thanks to André Malraux, who as Culture Minister fostered the restoration of the area. Malraux’s efforts were, however, not immune from criticism, sometimes seen as a form of socio-economic cleansing with concomitant fossilization, and thus emblematic of the problems faced by a city which has always been torn between the preservation of its past and the need to adapt to social and historical change. The book focuses particularly on literary, cinematic and other artistic reproductions of the quartier, of which it attempts to provide a comprehensive overview, and foregrounds particularly its importance as home to and base of two highly significant minorities – the Jewish and the gay communities.
