Paysannerie: The Ethnography, Consumption and Performance of Peasant Culture in Enlightenment Paris

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This thesis will be an inquiry into the interest in French rural culture among Parisian elites during the Ancien Régime. I will argue that the Enlightenment created spaces that fostered a curiosity about peasant societies among urban audiences well before the revolution, using the eighteenth century term Paysannerie to define this interest in rustic lifestyles. My study will revolve around food, shelter, dress, and representation, focusing heavily on ideas of performance and intercultural exchange. This as yet unstudied taste for both collecting and imitating the artefacts and technologies of French peasants was driven by the conquests of Louis XIV, the opening up of grain routes within France, the market for exotica, as well as the enlightenment's moral distaste of artifice. Previous art historical studies such as Amy Wyngaard's work on Watteau, or Melissa Hyde on Boucher's pastorals, have always read the interpretation of peasant life in the Ancien Régime through the lens of literary motifs, constructing this argument solely through salon paintings. I contend that the pastoral theme is not the only lens for understanding the reception of peasant identity among urban audiences. Instead, a corpus of objects, buildings, and images narrate a parallel, previously overlooked story of sincere inquiry into peasant life that formed part of the Enlightenment's project of self-definition.