TY - JOUR
T1 - The frisson of no-touch
T2 - A Fan's gallant Allegory of the Senses
AU - Cherbuliez, Juliette
PY - 2014/6
Y1 - 2014/6
N2 - The double-sided Allegory of the Senses, shows, on one side, a lateseventeenth-century courtly depiction of hearing, sight, and smell. It is possible to read these as three vignettes depicting gallant sociability in elite society: the very sociability in which the fan played a crucial role. Our interpretation must change, however, if we acknowledge both the 'missing' senses of taste and touch not directly depicted on the fan, and the fan's reverse, a rural scene of a couple. The play of absent and present senses, and the tension between the courtly vignettes of the primary image and its humbler other side, suggest also a possible 'fluttering' of signification, not unlike the motion of a fan itself, which may undo some of the gallant visual rhetoric which at first glance appears to dominate an understanding of this fan.
AB - The double-sided Allegory of the Senses, shows, on one side, a lateseventeenth-century courtly depiction of hearing, sight, and smell. It is possible to read these as three vignettes depicting gallant sociability in elite society: the very sociability in which the fan played a crucial role. Our interpretation must change, however, if we acknowledge both the 'missing' senses of taste and touch not directly depicted on the fan, and the fan's reverse, a rural scene of a couple. The play of absent and present senses, and the tension between the courtly vignettes of the primary image and its humbler other side, suggest also a possible 'fluttering' of signification, not unlike the motion of a fan itself, which may undo some of the gallant visual rhetoric which at first glance appears to dominate an understanding of this fan.
KW - Allegory of the Senses
KW - Experience
KW - Galanterie
KW - Taste
KW - Touch
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84905252439&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1179/0265106814Z.00000000036
DO - 10.1179/0265106814Z.00000000036
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84905252439
SN - 0265-1068
VL - 36
SP - 18
EP - 27
JO - Seventeenth-Century French Studies
JF - Seventeenth-Century French Studies
IS - 1
ER -