Edited collections by Manon Raffard
Penser la culture sensorielle
Eclats, 2024
Ce numéro explore la notion de culture sensorielle à travers des articles issus des études en art... more Ce numéro explore la notion de culture sensorielle à travers des articles issus des études en arts du spectacle, littérature, cinéma, muséologie et stylistique.
Humanités médicales et de santé du Moyen Âge au XXIe siècle
Eclats, 2023
This issue explores different aspects of medical humanities research in French and Francophone li... more This issue explores different aspects of medical humanities research in French and Francophone literature, children’s literature, the arts, linguistics, and educational sciences, from the Middle Ages to the present day.
L'Excrémentiel au XIXe siècle
Articles by Manon Raffard
The Atmospheric Cost of Class-Based Spatial Segregation in Nineteenth-Century Paris
Venti, 2025
The article considers atmospheric forms of violence through an olfactory perspective. In the cont... more The article considers atmospheric forms of violence through an olfactory perspective. In the context of nineteenth-century Paris, the cultural survival of miasma theory (despite the epistemological triumph of germ theory) fosters a general distrust of smell, and especially of malodors. While cities are re-shaped by industrialization and sharp demographic growth, olfactory criteria become essential to the social territorialization of urban spaces. The smelliest, most remote areas are devoted to both malodorous industries and working-class housing, thus highlighting how sensory-environmental concerns are inherently linked to socio-political concerns.
Sang et Encens : penser la chair et le sacré dans la littérature décadente (1887-1911)
Otrante, 2025
This article uses an olfactory point of view to explore the sensory representation of blood. Bear... more This article uses an olfactory point of view to explore the sensory representation of blood. Bearing in mind the particular interest of late nineteenth-century French-speaking culture for everything smell-related, the article’s main objective is to explore the forms and issues surrounding a particularly long-standing cultural association between spilt blood and the excretion of aromatic resins. The article draws on examples from two literary works that make extensive use of this association (Rachilde's La Marquise de Sade and Gabriele d'Annunzio's Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien) to contextualise and articulate concerns linked to the nascent development of proto-sexology and to questions regarding religious concerns, omnipresent in ‘fin-de-siècle’ Europe. Smelt blood becomes a vehicle for ‘borderline’ sexual and sensory experiences, insofar as they touch the boundaries of the sacred.
From Coumarou to New-Mown-Hay. A Cultural History of Coumarin Across the Atlantic (17th-20th c.)
History of the Senses, 2025
From the late 1850s to the first years of WWI, the British, French, and American élites were seem... more From the late 1850s to the first years of WWI, the British, French, and American élites were seemingly obsessed with one scent – freshly mown hay – as identified by the molecule responsible for its characteristic fragrance: coumarin. In fragrance adverts, society pages, poems, and novels, the cultural omnipresence of mass-produced New-Mown-Hay fragrances is visible through a considerable rise in production of hay-scented perfumes and cosmetics across the West, but especially in France, between 1850 and 1930. From face powders and sachets to handkerchief extracts, New-Mown-Hay-scented products owe their success to the availability of two raw materials: the Tonka bean and synthetic coumarin. Originating from the forests of the Guyana Shield, the Tonka tree (Dipteryx odorata) grows in Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and parts of Brazil. First used in Indigenous and Creole communities for medicinal and aromatic purposes, the Tonka bean becomes a valuable commodity of transatlantic trade between France, England, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and their colonies during the first half of the 19th century. It shares a common fate with more frequently studied colonial botanical commodities, such as cinchona, rubber, coffee, tobacco, or cane sugar. The success story of Tonka in 19th-century Western culture is a curious case of olfactory cultural history. The omnipresent use of Tonka in the fragrance industry for decades may not be solely due to its objective qualities as a raw material but rather to its cultural and commercial appeal as a fixture of France’s economic, political, and cultural imperialism over southern American territories. Using qualitative methods and drawing from historical, ethnobotanical, industrial, and literary sources, I hereby demonstrate how European colonial history and culture have turned a specific scent into a commodity, rather than the odorous object itself. Through a materialist consideration of olfactory history, this article examines cultural representations of the scent of new-mown hay through the aromatic raw materials used for its production to describe the processes through which a smell itself can be the subject of sensory commodification.
Revue d'études culturelles, 2023
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific r... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial -NoDerivatives 4.0 International License A perdre haleine. Considérations interdisciplinaires sur l'odeur du baiser au XIXe siècle
Eclats, 2024
La revue Éclats autorise et encourage le dépôt de ce pdf dans des archives ouvertes. PREO est une... more La revue Éclats autorise et encourage le dépôt de ce pdf dans des archives ouvertes. PREO est une plateforme de diffusion voie diamant.
Orchids, Arums, and Tiger Lilies: Queer Olfactory Culture and Tropical Plants (France, 1885-1905)
Alabastron, 2024
This research article offers a re-reading of Decadent culture's passion for tropical blooms – and... more This research article offers a re-reading of Decadent culture's passion for tropical blooms – and their scents – as a queer olfactory social practice. Between 1885 and 1905, French literary productions depicted tropical plants as important cultural objects, especially for the upper-classes. As Jane Desmarais explains in Monsters under Glass (2018), glasshouses became more ubiquitous in cultural representations as the collecting and hybridizing of tropical plants grew into hobbies of the elite. Still, the foreign nature of tropical flora, as it belongs to colonized territories, was usually perceived as a threat to the integrity and purity of the European sensorium. Although tropical blooms were celebrated for their vivid colour and intense scent, glasshouses were represented as spaces of unbridled sensory excess, but also sexual and gendered transgression. With the emergence of the Linnaean sexual classification system during the 18th century, botanical imagery became intrinsically sexual to the point that the scientific study of botany was considered ill-advised for women. The hermaphroditic biology of some plants was a source of fascination for botanists and thus fed into representations of botanical androgyny as a queer metaphor: Liane de Pougy's memoirs suggest that orchids were used as a queer calling card, while Jane de la Vaudère represents fragrant glasshouses as cruising spaces.
Influenced by Jack Parlett's reflections in The Poetics of Cruising (2022), as well as queer ecocriticism and olfactory semiotics, I believe the cultural context of late 19th century France can help outline queer social practices of olfactory cruising, such as using specific scents in specific spaces like a fragrant calling card. As etiquette manuals prescribe light, pleasant scents for "respectable" people, it seems the preference for the strange, overwhelming fragrances of tropical blooms is as much a social and cultural oversight as a sexual and gendered transgression.
Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage, 2023
Whilst wood tars and resins were used as remedies and preservatives since Prehistoric times (Ambr... more Whilst wood tars and resins were used as remedies and preservatives since Prehistoric times (Ambrose 2018), creosote truly entered European sensory culture during the nineteenth-century as an industrial preservative and medical disinfectant. In Europe, the generic term 'creosote' mostly refers to two distinct products, often confused with each other: wood-tar creosote and coal-tar creosote. The former is a light-coloured oily substance produced by heating certain types of timber (usually beech, birch, or coniferous woods) at high-temperatures. The latter is a dark thick oily liquid extracted from coal-tar. Both share some medicinal and chemical properties (antiseptic, caustic, antifungal, to cite a few) as well as comparable tarry and phenolic olfactory profiles. Wood-tar creosote was discovered by Karl Von Reichenbach in 1832 by working on pyroligneous acid and beech tar. First known under the name ‘carbolic acid’, coal-tar creosote on the other hand was discovered in 1834 by Rungé, and was soon renamed ‘coal-tar creosote’ after chemists highlighted its similar properties with its wood based counterpart (Schorlemmer 1885). Both creosotes were subsequently used in a variety of contexts requiring thorough disinfection, like factories, surgical rooms, or dental offices, but also in the treatment of several respiratory illnesses, such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. Despite most accounts describing creosote's pungent smell as particularly unpleasant, its association with hygienic and medical practices turned its tarry scent into a signifier of health and hygiene, feeding into the idea that treatments must smell bad to be effective, and contributing to the perception that physical pain and sensory distress are necessary experiences of proper care.
Le chapitre est consacré au compositeur, romancier et poète Louis Didier (1875-1902), plus connu ... more Le chapitre est consacré au compositeur, romancier et poète Louis Didier (1875-1902), plus connu sous le pseudonyme de Luis d'Herdy. L'étude commence par éclaircir quelques aspects obscurs de la biographie de l'auteur à partir de renseignements glanés dans certaines parties autobiographiques de son oeuvre. M. Raffard examine ensuite l'oeuvre romanesque de Luis d'Herdy au regard de pratiques intertextuelles chères à la littérature fin-de-siècle : la citation, l'allusion, le pastiche, la parodie etc. L'analyse attentive de ces références permet de faire émerger les contours d'une poétique imitative. Pour d'Herdy, il s'agit de rendre hommage aux phares de la fin-de-siècle, mais aussi d'utiliser la réécriture comme un principe créateur fertile, à un moment où les littérateurs s'interrogent sur leur capacité à créer une oeuvre originale. Parce qu'elle est imitative, l'oeuvre de d'Herdy réunit et condense les orientations poétiques et thématiques les plus saillantes de son époque (pratiques artistiques multimodales, homosexualité, identités transgenres, fragmentation de l'identité auctoriale, sensorialité exacerbée etc.), et permet d'isoler les caractéristiques principales d'un possible canon fin-de-siècle. Cette étude est intégralement consacrée à une figure particulièrement mystérieuse de la littérature finiséculaire : Louis Didier, généralement publié sous le pseudonyme quasi-anagrammatique de Luis d'Herdy. Au-delà d'une considérable difficulté d'accès à ses productions, la figure de Louis Didier est nimbée d'un épais brouillard biographique que je tâcherai de dissiper partiellement. Le trait saillant de ses productions-qu'elles soient romanesques, poétiques ou musicales-est l'actif dialogue qu'elles entretiennent avec des figures majeures de la culture fin-de-siècle. En plus de citer et de pasticher abondamment Huysmans, Samain, Flaubert, Baudelaire et d'autres phares de l'esprit décadent, d'Herdy a aussi mis en musique des poèmes de Jean Lorrain et de Robert de Montesquiou. Au regard de la densité de ces interactions intertextuelles, il s'agit d'explorer la production de Louis Didier au regard d'un qualificatif souvent péjoratif lorsqu'il est appliqué à la littérature fin-de-siècle : mineure. Les minores les plus obscurs et les plus négligés, tels que Luis d'Herdy, peuvent permettre à la critique de saisir les contours d'une poétique générale de la fin-de-siècle, courant qui résiste ardemment-par son éthique de la subversion et son esthétique de la perversion-à la formation et à la stabilisation d'un possible canon. I. De nouveaux éléments biographiques Luis d'Herdy fait partie des auteurs de la fin-de-siècle dont les écrits sont particulièrement difficiles à dénicher. Au-delà d'une réédition salvatrice de Monsieur Antinoüs et Madame Sapho en 2012 par Marie-France David-de Palacio 1 , la recherche doit se contenter de numérisations rares et souvent coûteuses. Mais, quand les quelques oeuvres de Luis d'Herdy sont enfin accessibles, un autre obstacle se dresse : l'absence totale de renseignements biographiques.
L'Excrémentiel au XIXe siècle, Dec 22, 2021
Cette étude examine les relations entre discours antisémite et imaginaire de l’excrémentiel dans ... more Cette étude examine les relations entre discours antisémite et imaginaire de l’excrémentiel dans un corpus de récits fictionnels français et belges de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, comprenant entre autres Manette Salomon (1869) des frères Goncourt, La Marquise de Sade (1887) de Rachilde, Le Désespéré (1887) et Sueur de Sang (1893) de Léon Bloy, et La Fin des Bourgeois (1892) de Camille Lemonnier. Dans ces textes, les romanciers utilisent dans des proportions variées des notations olfactives nauséabondes, souvent liées aux domaines du fécal, du déchet, de la digestion etc., comme autant d’indices de l’appartenance à la communauté juive d’un personnage. La relation entre idéologie antisémite et imaginaire excrémentiel illustre des tensions politiques, sociales, culturelles et économiques complexes, tensions qui influencent directement la manière dont le texte littéraire conçoit à la fois le discours de l’autre et le discours sur l’autre. Le foetor judaicus n’apparaît pas tant comme une caractéristique corporelle des membres de la communauté juive que comme un trait constitutif involontaire et métaphorique du discours antisémite.
La partie et le tout : Partitions et (re)compositions des corps au XIXe siècle – Journée d’études des Doctoriales de la SERD (2020), Jan 10, 2021
Dans le cadre de la journée d'étude des Doctoriales de la SERD intitulée « La partie et le tout. ... more Dans le cadre de la journée d'étude des Doctoriales de la SERD intitulée « La partie et le tout. Partitions et (re)compositions des corps au XIX e siècle », cette étude se propose d'explorer les représentations littéraires d'un fragment corporel très spécifique : son odeur. Dans la lignée de la vague hygiéniste inaugurée au XVIII e siècle, les odeurs corporelles sont soumises à un jeu de régulations propre à la morale bourgeoise 2. L'odeur corporelle est perçue comme une expansion du corps du sujet, une « partie » signifiant un « tout ». C'est dans ce contexte particulier que la psychiatrie balbutiante s'attache à cataloguer et à interpréter les odeurs du corps humain en termes symptomatologiques, comme on peut par exemple le voir chez Ernest Monin, un médecin proche des cercles littéraires décadents, pour qui « le sens de l'olfaction peut être utilement appliquée la clinique, parce que les odeurs ont toujours une signification, dans les phénomènes biologiques 3 ». De la même manière que les parfums artificiels choisis avec soin par les consommateurs, les odeurs corporelles involontaires « dévoilent et trahissent », alors même qu'elles sont des « signes invisibles et impalpables 4 ».
La partie et le tout. Partitions et (re)compositions des corps au XIXe siècle, 2020
Cette étude se propose d’explorer les représentations littéraires d’un fragment corporel très spé... more Cette étude se propose d’explorer les représentations littéraires d’un fragment corporel très spécifique : son odeur. On a choisi d'étudier plus particulièrement le mythe de l'odeur de sainteté à travers des références essentiellement littéraires (Zola, Lemonnier, Huysmans, Goncourt).
Romanciers fin-de-siècle, 2020
Le chapitre est consacré au compositeur, romancier et poète Louis Didier (1875-1902), plus connu ... more Le chapitre est consacré au compositeur, romancier et poète Louis Didier (1875-1902), plus connu sous le pseudonyme de Luis d’Herdy. L’étude commence par éclaircir quelques aspects obscurs de la biographie de l’auteur à partir de renseignements glanés dans certaines parties autobiographiques de son œuvre. Elle examine ensuite l’œuvre romanesque de Luis d’Herdy au regard de pratiques intertextuelles chères à la littérature fin-de-siècle : la citation, l’allusion, le pastiche, la parodie etc. L’analyse attentive de ces références permet de faire émerger les contours d’une poétique imitative. Pour d’Herdy, il s’agit de rendre hommage aux phares de la fin-de-siècle, mais aussi d’utiliser la réécriture comme un principe créateur fertile, à un moment où les littérateurs s’interrogent sur leur capacité à créer une œuvre originale. Parce qu’elle est imitative, l’œuvre de d’Herdy réunit et condense les orientations poétiques et thématiques les plus saillantes de son époque (pratiques artistiques multimodales, homosexualité, identités transgenres, fragmentation de l’identité auctoriale, sensorialité exacerbée etc.), et permet d’isoler les caractéristiques principales d’un possible canon fin-de-siècle.
Conference Presentations by Manon Raffard
Miasmatic Nature. Industrial Smellscapes and Environmental Pollution in the Poetry of Joris-Karl Huysmans and Emile Verhaeren (1880-1895)
Work and Smell, 2024
Industrial work directly disturbs the olfactory experience of the natural environment. The presen... more Industrial work directly disturbs the olfactory experience of the natural environment. The presentation will thus show how the industrial development of urban and rural spaces in western Europe deeply affected the literary representation of natural ‘smellscapes’ in late 19th-century French-language poetry. During the second half of the 19th century, the progressive industrialization of western Europe led to the subsequent sensory transformation of natural spaces, in both rural and urban settings. As natural objects (land, vegetation, animal life, bodies of water, etc.) were the first victims of the industrialization process, the sensory experience of the natural environment became tainted by industrial practices, often in the form of noxious fumes or foul gases. Still, while industrial smells threatened the integrity of natural smellscapes, they also allowed for better awareness of natural smells as forms of intangible heritage. As such, poetical writing of the time often uses olfactory descriptions and imagery as potent literary devices to examine the idea of ‘modernity’ itself, its swift and inescapable pace, and how it can endanger vulnerable sensoria, on both aesthetic and political grounds. The presentation will cross close readings of J.-K. Huysmans and E. Verhaeren’s poetical works with medical and historical sources to better demonstrate how collective concerns with industrial smells are not exclusively a matter of workers’ rights and public health. Olfactory pollution and its impact on smellscapes necessarily raises the question of the historicity of our own intangible sensory experiences, as well as their possible conservation through literary means. As the development of industrial work in 19th-century Europe actively participated in the emergence of our current climate crisis, the presentation will highlight how the literary and cultural consideration of ‘working’ smells – whether pleasant or unpleasant – is equally a matter of aïsthésis and politics.
Good Vibes Only? Olfaction Theory and Ideological Disputes in Nineteenth-Century France
Odeuropa's Smellinar, 2023
During the early modern period up until the late 18th century, smells were thought of as volatile... more During the early modern period up until the late 18th century, smells were thought of as volatile corpuscles or salts carried to our noses through the air. Smells were truly made of matter, either specific and ontologically different from its source-object (aroma theory), or infinitesimal emanations from the odorous bodies themselves (atomic model). This understanding of odours led to the emergence of the molecular theory of olfaction from the 1820s onward. At the beginning of the 19th century however, despite all the evidence in favour of the corpuscular/chemical paradigm, the consideration of olfaction as a vibratory sense, much like sight and sound, became more popular among scientists and artists, as it allowed to think of smells in the same way as light, colour, sound, and especially music, but also other physical phenomena, such as heat or electricity. This presentation briefly describes and explains how the vibratory theory of olfaction (its influences, beliefs, ideologies, etc.) came to be during the 19th century to show how the scientific study of olfaction is influenced by cultural productions, such as the arts, popular culture, philosophy, and especially religion. Historically, the scientific understanding of olfaction is rooted in complex ideological debates between different scientific fields of knowledge.
“Un nez qui pense”. Le parfumeur en théoricien
Le parfumeur : évolution d’une figure depuis la Renaissance, 2021
“Comme l’attouchement d’une main moite de volupté”. Toucher, genre et sexualité dans La Curée
La Curée. Empire et emprise de la chair, 2021
De la baignoire au flacon : olfaction et masturbation féminine (1850-1914)
Femmes, féminité et parfums au XIXe siècle : Imaginaires olfactifs et construction du genre, 2021
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Edited collections by Manon Raffard
Articles by Manon Raffard
Influenced by Jack Parlett's reflections in The Poetics of Cruising (2022), as well as queer ecocriticism and olfactory semiotics, I believe the cultural context of late 19th century France can help outline queer social practices of olfactory cruising, such as using specific scents in specific spaces like a fragrant calling card. As etiquette manuals prescribe light, pleasant scents for "respectable" people, it seems the preference for the strange, overwhelming fragrances of tropical blooms is as much a social and cultural oversight as a sexual and gendered transgression.
Conference Presentations by Manon Raffard