Article ID: CBB396842436

Illuminated Publics: Representations of Street Lamps in Revolutionary France (October 2020)

unapi

Bothereau, Benjamin (Author)


Technology and Culture
Volume: 61
Issue: 4
Pages: 1045-1075


Publication Date: October 2020
Edition Details: Special Issue: Manufacturing Modernity: Innovations in Early Modern Europe
Language: English

This article examines the technical and symbolic perceptions of the street lantern before and during the French Revolution. More broadly, it seeks to understand how new technical objects impact an urban habitat—in particular, the processes of judgment, agreement, familiarization, and social integration involved in the social acceptance of innovations. Tracing these multi-layered processes uncovers a shift in meaning and appropriation of the street lantern in the eighteenth century. This shift helped inventors promote their products, but also subverted their innovation for sinister purposes. The complex history of how the lantern's representations evolved obscures the distinctions between the visual culture of technical inventions represented by trade cards and popular imagery represented by caricatures. The article thus addresses the question of the embeddedness of technologies in cultural discourses, the entwining of narratives with material objects.

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Associated with

Article Adam Lucas (October 2020) Manufacturing Modernity: Innovations in Early Modern Europe—An Introduction. Technology and Culture (pp. 995-1016). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB396842436/

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Authors & Contributors
Garçon, Anne-Françoise
Baudry, Jerome
Wicken, Olaf
González Espitia, Juan Carlos
Thébaud-Sorger, Marie
Bothereau, Benjamin
Concepts
Technological innovation
Cultural history
History of technology, as a discipline
Media (communications)
Symbolism; symbolic representation
Economic history
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
20th century
17th century
20th century, late
Enlightenment
Places
France
United States
England
Madrid (Spain)
Barcelona (Spain)
Americas
Institutions
United States. Patent Office
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