The Civilization of Smells | Robert Muchembled

Why is the sense of smell, a fundamental sense for adapting to danger and identifying the best sexual partner, so little known?

Its paradoxical history, if one delves into it, is one of the most captivating. In this unparalleled synthesis, Robert Muchembled investigates and presents the extraordinary transformations of the sense of smell in the West, from the Renaissance to the early 19th century.

The sources used are numerous and rich: physiognomy manuals; works by doctors, philosophers, poets, storytellers, theologians, polemicists, moralists; treatises on civility, "Secrets for Ladies" treatises; royal edicts; regulations of the perfumer-glove maker profession, post-mortem inventories (apothecaries, perfumer-glove makers); iconography of the olfactory sense...

Muchembled seizes this extraordinary collection and outlines the history of the powerful repression that, for half a millennium, has led us to consider the sense of smell as the most contemptible of senses before recently elevating it to the rank of the most refined.

From the miasmas exhaled by human concentrations to the nauseating intimate emanations, from the "excremental" scents (musk, civet, and amber) supposedly protective against the plague to the condemnations by moralists, from the 18th-century olfactory revolution that transformed a drop of floral or fruity perfume into a vector of hedonism to the latest scientific discoveries, Muchembled invites his reader on an extraordinary olfactory journey through the civilization of manners.

Information:

• Format: Paperback
• EAN13: 9782251447094
• ISBN: 978-2-251-44709-4
• Publisher: Les Belles Lettres
• Publication Date: 10/2017
• Collection: History
• Number of pages: 272
• Dimensions: 24 x 16 cm
• Weight: 570 g
• Language: French

(Les Cahiers de Science & Vie)