Alain Corbin

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Alain Corbin
Alain Corbin (2020)
Born(1936-01-12)January 12, 1936
OccupationHistorian


Alain Corbin (born January 12, 1936, in Courtomer is a French historian.[1] He is a specialist of the 19th century in France and in microhistory.

Trained in the Annales School, Corbin's work has moved away from the large-scale collective structures studied by Fernand Braudel towards a history of sensibilities which is closer to Lucien Febvre's history of mentalités.[2] His books have explored the histories of such subjects as male desire and prostitution, sensory experience of smell and sound, and the 1870 burning of a young nobleman in a Dordogne village.

Works[edit]

  • Les filles de noce: Misère sexuelle et prostitution au XIXe siècle, 1978
    • Translation: Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850, (published 1996)
  • Le territoire du vide: L'occident et le désir du rivage (1750-1840), 1988
    • Translation: The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750-1840, (published 1994)
  • Le miasme et la jonquille: L'odorat et l'imaginaire social, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles, 1982
    • Translation: The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination), (published 1988)
  • Le village des "cannibales", 1986
    • Translation: The Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870, (published 1993)
  • Le cloches de la terre: Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIXe siècle, 1994
    • Translation: Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th-century French Countryside, (published 1998)
  • Le temps, le désir et l'horreur, 1995
    • Translation: Time, Desire, and Horror: Towards a History of the Senses, (published 1995)
  • Le monde retrouvé de Louis-François Pinagot: Sur les traces d'un inconnu (1798-1876), 1998
    • Translation: The Life of an Unknown: The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker in Nineteenth-century France, (published 2001)
  • La pluie, le soleil et le vent: Une histoire de la sensibilité au temps qu'il fait, Aubier, 2013
  • Histoire buissonnière de la pluie, Flammarion, 2017
  • Histoire du silence: de la Renaissance à nos jours, 2018
    • Translation: A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day, (published 2018)
  • Terra Incognita: Une histoire de l'ignorance, 2020
    • Translation: Terra Incognita: A History of Ignorance in the 18th and 19th Centuries, (published 2021)

Bibliography[edit]

  • For a general overview on his work, see S. Godfrey "Alain Corbin : Making Sense of French History », French Historical Studies, vol. 25, n° 2, 2002, p. 381-398
  • See also Dominique kalifa, "L’expérience, le désir et l’histoire. Alain Corbin ou le tournant culturel silencieux", in “Alain Corbin and the writing of History”, French Politics, Culture & Society, vol. 22, n° 2, 2004, p. 14-25.

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Alain Corbin à Flers : « Revenir à Lonlay-L'Abbaye, c'était revenir au paradis »". actu.fr. May 16, 2014.
  2. ^ Godfrey, Simon (2006), "Alain Corbin", The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-10790-7