Extract
[...] Aleksandra Pestova (2021) highlights that 'Mercier mobilizes visuality as a pedagogical tool to reveal the unequal structures of Parisian society' (Pestova p. 15). But this visuality does not come without critical listening. Far from a simple background, the noises constitute what could be called a social stratigraphy: the louder the noise, the lower we descend to the laborious layers. The silence of the salons and also of the closed carriages remains, however, out of frame. This imbalance is precisely telling. [...]
[...] They become the mediators of a city that listens to itself. Through them, the authors transmit a urban density that does not pass through the gaze. It is they who 'carry' the cries, who make them circulate. One could even say: who give shape to an acoustic memory of pre-revolutionary Paris. It is then difficult to make a distinction. The street is neither entirely real nor entirely fictional. It is stretched between the cry and the echo. Between the archive and the voice. [...]
[...] They ensure a form of sonic social link. By their cry, which are often stereotyped, but not without variation, they maintain a floating urban coherence. What Claude Fischler (1993) calls 'the sonic nutrition' of the city (p. 142) could also be applied here: there is a permanent digestion of noise by the city. Here, one can think of the role of cries as forms of moving identity. The cheesemonger, the coal seller, the water carrier: all speak, but not only. [...]
[...] "Visuality in Pre-revolutionary Paris: Examining Louis- Sébastien Mercier's Tableau de Paris », International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Science, vol n°10, p. 12-20. Rétif de la Bretonne, Nicolas-Edme (1788-1794). Les Nuits de Paris ou le Spectateur nocturne. Paris, Veuve Duchesne. Schafer, R. Murray (1977). The Tuning of the World. Toronto, McClelland and Stewart. Turner, Peter (2019). 'Cris nouveaux: The Soundscape of Paris in Mercier's Tableau de Paris and Le Nouveau Paris », Early Modern French Studies, vol n°1, p. 91-107. [...]
[...] Sound then becomes a literary effect, a device of affect. The writing itself becomes mimetic: onomatopoeias, narrative ruptures, and silences translate this fragmentary listening. Moreover, a detail often ignored deserves to be recalled. It is the frequency of whispered or half-heard dialogues. Rétif reproduces fragmented exchanges, sometimes inaudible, which become signs of a troubled, opaque city. It is a writing of the ear rather than the eye. One could of course object that this process is first and foremost novelistic. [...]
