List Books » Politics of Appearance: The Symbolism and Representation of Dress in Revolutionary France
Authors: Richard Wrigley
ISBN-13: 9781859735046, ISBN-10: 1859735045
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Berg Publishers
Date Published: July 2002
Edition: First Edition
Richard Wrigley is a Principal Lecturer and Chair of Department of History of Art,at Oxford Brookes University
In the turbulent political and social landscape of Revolutionary France, dress played a major role in defining and displaying new identities. What people wore was, in fact, a vital symbol of their allegiances and beliefs. Drawing on a wide range of documentary and visual sources, this book offers a vivid picture of the highly charged politics of Revolutionary appearances. The author explores the dynamic complexity of the new socio-political world, where the identification of who stood for what was such an urgent, if vexed, issue: where identical items of dress could stand for opposing political ideologies, where a variety of institutions - from local societies to the national assembly - tried to define the meanings associated with clothing, and where the clothes a person wore could seal their fate. Tracing the stories surrounding the liberty cap, the different manifestations of official dress, the tricolore cockade and the sans-culotte provides a new and exciting insight into the complexities and uncertainties that made up life in Revolutionary France and the political culture that it created.
Abbreviations | ||
Acknowledgements | ||
Introduction | 1 | |
1 | Revolutionary Relics | 13 |
2 | Representing Authority: New Forms of Official Identity | 59 |
3 | Cockades: Badge Culture and its Discontents | 97 |
4 | Liberty Caps: From Roman Emblem to Radical Headgear | 135 |
5 | Sans-culottes: The Formation, Currency, and Representation of a Vestimentary Stereotype | 187 |
6 | Mistaken Identities: Disguise, Surveillance, and the Legibility of Appearances | 229 |
Coda | 259 | |
Bibliography | 275 | |
Index | 311 |