The Coachman's Bare Rump: An Eighteenth-Century French Cover-Up

On 21 January 1763, a wealthy nobleman staged a performance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Devin de village at his Parisian townhouse. The soir裠was attended by military and financial elites. After the curtain fell, several of the master's servants were joking with each other backstage. When th...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inEighteenth-century studies Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 279 - 308
Main Author Ravel, Jeffrey S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.12.2007
Subjects
Buttocks
Civil disobedience
Comic theater
Curtains
Domestic workers
European history
French language
Humor
Intervention
Language history
Legal depositions
Massacres
Native peoples
Police
Police reports
Politics
Race relations
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)
Spectacle
Swiss literature
Theater
Togo
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:On 21 January 1763, a wealthy nobleman staged a performance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Devin de village at his Parisian townhouse. The soir裠was attended by military and financial elites. After the curtain fell, several of the master's servants were joking with each other backstage. When the coachman dropped his trousers and displayed his buttocks to a young black page, the latter abruptly raised the curtain to expose the coachman's bare rump to the remaining elites in the room. Their master then called the neighborhood police to arrest the coachman. This article explores issues of social distinction, race, and state authority raised by this incident.
ISSN:0013-2586
1086-315X
1086-315X
DOI:10.1353/ecs.2007.0013