Alain Corbin

Alain Corbin (born January 12, 1936, Lonlay-l'Abbaye)^[1] is a French historian. He is a specialist of the 19th century in France and in microhistory.

Trained in the Annales School, Corbin's work has moved away from the large-scale collective structures studied by Fernand Braudel towards a history of sensibilities which is closer to Lucien Febvre's history of mentalités.^[2] His books have explored the histories of such subjects as male desire and prostitution, sensory experience of smell and sound, and the 1870 burning of a young nobleman in a Dordogne village.

Works

• Les filles de noce: Misère sexuelle et prostitution au XIXe siècle, 1978
  • Translation: Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850, (published 1996)
• Le miasme et la jonquille: L'odorat et l'imaginaire social, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles
  • Translation: The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (published 1988)
• Le territoire du vide: L'occident et le désir du rivage (1750-1840)
• Le cloches de la terre: Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIXe siècle
  • Translation: Sound and Meaning in the Village Bells, (published 1998)
• Le monde retrouvé de Louis-François Pinagot: Sur les traces d'un inconnu (1798-1876)
  • Translation: The Life of an Unknown, (published 2001)

Bibliography

• For a general overview on his work, see S. Godfrey "Alain Corbin : Making Sense of French History », French Historical Studies, vol. 25, n° 2, 2002, p. 381-398
• See also Dominique kalifa, "L’expérience, le désir et l’histoire. Alain Corbin ou le tournant culturel silencieux", in “Alain Corbin and the writing of History”, French Politics, Culture & Society, vol. 22, n° 2, 2004, p. 14-25.

References

1. « Mon village natal se nomme Lonlay-l’Abbaye » Réforme "Les parfums de la mémoire"
2. Godfrey, Simon (2006), "Alain Corbin", The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-10790-7