City of noise : sound and nineteenth-century Paris

Author:

Boutin, Aimée, 1970-

Format:

Online Resource

Language:

English

Imprint:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2015

Subject:

Paris (France) - History - 19th century
Paris (France) - Social life and customs - 19th century
City noise - France - Paris - History - 19th century
Noise pollution - France - Paris
Street vendors - France - Paris - History - 19th century
Urban renewal - France - Paris - History - 19th century
Urban policy - France - Paris - History - 19th century
City and town life - France - Paris - History - 19th century
HISTORY - Europe - France
SOCIAL SCIENCE - Anthropology - Cultural
City and town life
City noise
Manners and customs
Noise pollution
Street vendors
Urban policy
Urban renewal
France - Paris
Lärm
Paris
Buller - historia
Urban politik - historia
Gatuliv - historia
Gatuförsäljning
Frankrike - Paris
Regions & Countries - Europe
History & Archaeology
France

ISBN:

9780252097263 and 0252097262

Series:

Studies in sensory history

Description:

1 online resource

Bibliographic Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Contents:

Introduction -- Aural flânerie : the flâneur in the city as concert -- Blason sonore : street cries in the city -- Sonic classifications in Haussmann's Paris -- Listening to the glazier's cry -- "Cry louder, street crier" : peddling poetry and the avant-garde -- Conclusion

Summary:

"Nineteenth-century Paris was grand, busy, and overwhelmingly noisy, so noisy that the racket became a matter for public concern in Paris before any other city. There were not only more people in the growing metropolis, but more sources of sound, much of it sung, barked, or bellowed to sell merchandise. The competition for attention raised the volume and increased the variety of sounds as street peddlers strove to be heard amid the din. Aimée Boutin draws on the first-hand accounts of Parisian noise to recreate, as much as possible, what the city sounded like, especially in its commercial core, and how people responded to the different sounds. Boutin focuses on the peddlers whose status altered in the 19th century. Dating back to the Middle Ages, the Cris de Paris were a musical, textual, and graphic genre that classified tradesmen as fixed, often idealized types, identified by the cries of their trade. In the 19th century, Parisian peddlers were perceived by bourgeois listeners as troublemakers (noisiers), lowlife who disturbed the peace, and by poets like Baudelaire as challenges to the bourgeois he despised. Itinerant, often from provinces that spoke a different accent, they were just a step above begging, or peddled as a pretense for begging, and they demanded to be heard. Peddlers became identified with sedition and rebellion. Boutin examines how peddlers were affected by Baron Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris, and by legislation and urban policy regarding vagrancy and noise abatement. As the peddlers' cries diminished, they were taken into poetry, but they never really went away"-- Provided by publisher

Call Number:

DC733 .B68 2015eb