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The Allure of the Archives
The Allure of the Archives | Arlette Farge
5 posts | 3 read | 2 to read
DIVArlette Farge’s Le Goût de l’archive is widely regarded as a historiographical classic. While combing through two-hundred-year-old judicial records from the Archives of the Bastille, historian Farge was struck by the extraordinarily intimate portrayal they provided of the lives of the poor in pre-Revolutionary France, especially women. She was seduced by the sensuality of old manuscripts and by the revelatory power of voices otherwise lost. In The Allure of the Archives, she conveys the exhilaration of uncovering hidden secrets and the thrill of venturing into new dimensions of the past. Originally published in 1989, Farge’s classic work communicates the tactile, interpretive, and emotional experience of archival research while sharing astonishing details about life under the Old Regime in France. At once a practical guide to research methodology and an elegant literary reflection on the challenges of writing history, this uniquely rich volume demonstrates how surrendering to the archive’s allure can forever change how we understand the past./div
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review
mcausten_sister
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Pickpick

Balanced between a descriptive narrative surrounding a person's first encounter with the archives and a cautionary, veteran advice novel, The Allure of the Archives is a fantastic and pleasurable readwhile being entertaining and informative at the same time. Highly recommended for anyone interest in archival research.

#Research #Archives #History

blurb
mcausten_sister
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18th century French civilians have no chill.

#Archives #History

quote
mcausten_sister
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"But in these tatters of lives and scraps of disputes, found here [the archives] in bulk, we can find both human defiance and human misery."

I love the imagery Farge creates of research and its processes.

#History #Archives #FrenchTranslation

quote
mcausten_sister
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"The archives reject any ready-made tropes"

#Archives #History

blurb
laurenesalisbury
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Reading in my car while I wait on my husband to get out of work so I can take him to dinner. I'm reading this for a workshop I'm attending this weekend #RSA17

"Usually, the archive does not describe people in full. It cuts them out of their daily lives, cements them and some complaint or pitiful denial, and, even when they are consenting pins them down like trembling butterflies."

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