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Illustration by a fellow prisoner. The text in this volume is based on the original translation from the French by Preston Rambo.
Hiding the Guillotine examines the question of state involvement in violence by tracing the evolution of public executions in France. Why did the state move executions from the bloody and public stage of the guillotine to behind prison doors? In a fascinating exploration of a grim subject, Emmanuel Taïeb exposes the rituals and theatrical form of the death penalty and tells us who watched, who participated in, and who criticized (and ultimately brought an end to) a spectacle that the state called "punishment." France's abolition of the death penalty in 1981 has long overshadowed its suppression of public executions over forty years earlier. Since the Revolution, executions attracted tens of thousands of curious onlookers. But, gradually, there was a shift in attitude and the public no longer saw this as a civilized pastime. Why? Combining material from legal archives, police files, an executioner's notebooks, newspaper clippings, and documents relating to 566 executions, Hiding the Guillotine answers this question. Taïeb demonstrates the ways in which the media was at the vanguard of putting an end to the publicity surrounding the death penalty. The press had ample reason to be critical: cities were increasingly being used for leisure activity and prisons for those accused of criminal activity. The agitation surrounding each execution, coupled with a growing identification with the condemned, would blur these boundaries. Ranked among the top hundred history books by the website, Café du Web Historizo, Hiding the Guillotine has much to impart to students of legal history, human rights, and criminology, as well as to American historians.
How long did the guillotine's blade hang over the heads of French criminals? Was it abandoned in the late 1800s? Did French citizens of the early days of the twentieth century decry its brutality? No. The blade was allowed to do its work well into our own time. In 1974, Hamida Djandoubi brutally tortured 22 year-old Elisabeth Bousquet in an apartment in Marseille, putting cigarettes out on her body and lighting her on fire, finally strangling her to death in the Provencal countryside where he left her body to rot. In 1977, he became the last person executed by guillotine in France in a multifaceted case as mesmerizing for its senseless violence as it is though-provoking for its depiction of a France both in love with and afraid of The Foreigner. In a thrilling and enlightening account of a horrendous murder paired with the history of the guillotine and the history of capital punishment, Jeremy Mercer, a writer well known for his view of the underbelly of French life, considers the case of Hamida Djandoubi in the vast flow of blood that France's guillotine has produced. In his hands, France never looked so bloody...
As in a number of France’s major cities, civil war erupted in Lyon in the summer of 1793, ultimately leading to a siege of the city and a wave of mass executions. Using Lyon as a lens for understanding the politics of revolutionary France, this book reveals the widespread enthusiasm for judicial change in Lyon at the time of the Revolution, as well as the conflicts that ensued between elected magistrates in the face of radical democratization. Julie Patricia Johnson’s investigation of these developments during the bloodiest years of the Revolution offers powerful insights into the passions and the struggles of ordinary people during an extraordinary time.
The guillotine is a most potent image of revolutionary France, the tool whereby a whole society was 'redesigned'. Tracing the development of the guillotine, this book recounts the stories of famous executions, the lives of the executioners, and the research into whether the head retained consciousness after it was separated from the body.
A study of the guillotine as a cultural artifact, examining its representation in the arts, both high and low, over the course of two centuries.
"In this wickedly humorous book, Geoffrey Abbott describes the effectiveness of instruments of torture and reveals the macabre origins of familiar phrases such as 'gone west' or 'drawn a blank'. Covering everything from the preparation of the victim to the disposal of the body 'What a Way to Go' is everything you ever wanted to know about the ultimate penalty--and a lot you never thought to ask."--Publisher's description
The persistent myths of the French Revolution--that the destruction of the old order brought unrivaled freedom and happiness for Europe--are shattered in this rousing study of the political violence and social turmoil that struck France in the late 18th century. In the midst of the terrors which unfettered Enlightenment ideology unleashed on the West, Christian hope arose anew to bring true light to one of history's darkest hours.
Recounts the life of Maximilien Robespierre, including his childhood, his participation in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and his execution.
Ballet changed dramatically during the French Revolution. Judith Chazin-Bennahum reveals how the cold, stylized dance movements and weighted ornamental costumes of the 18th-century court ballets developed into the ballet of the Romantic movement, where dancers wore lightweight costumes that allowed them to flow freely across the stage and take to the air. Chazin-Bennahum studies the "livrets "(printed scenarios) of ballets performed in Paris from 1787 to 1801 to illustrate how dance reflected the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution. Ballet s main characters changed from mythological heroes and heroines to the heroes of the Revolution. She examines three major types of ballets and their sources to document these changes: ballets based on classical mythology; ballets inspired by the revolutionary spirit; and ballets rooted in middle-class themes from pastoral drama, traditional comedy, and exotic settings."