'Regionalism, Rebellion, and Popular Culture: Singing in French Provinces and Colonial Territories, 1680-1815'

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My thesis will investigate the geographies revealed by patterns of cultural performance in the long eighteenth century, during moments of political tension. The research will focus on several contrasting regions, both within France and overseas. It will draw upon a mixture of printed and manuscript political songs, alongside other textual materials, such as judicial records, journals, and popular pamphlets. In doing so, the project will evaluate how an awareness of cultural schemes of song might contribute to our understanding of the relationships characterising particular historical societies.Mona Ozouf and Keith Baker, among others, have suggested the ability of new social groups to influence politics in the eighteenth century, even without formal representation. These ideas about public opinion have permeated studies of popular culture. The relevance of oral and popular practices to the study of social and cultural history has long been acknowledged. Historians such as Robert Darnton, Nicholas Hammond, and Vincent Milliot have produced stimulating accounts of Parisian song cultures and soundscapes. However, there is a marked paucity of studies on popular political song in provincial and colonial territories. Furthermore, those who have considered the value of these sources in distinguishing social relations, identities, structures, and forces, have failed to comprehensively put calls for a multidisciplinary approach into practice. Although several studies posit effective ways of considering songs, they do not bring the historical discipline into substantive dialogue with theoretical or social musicology. I seek to go beyond this previous scholarship, examining the musical settings of texts, and tracing the 'genealogies' of songs as aural palimpsests through both their textual and musical content. Investigating several regions within mainland France and its overseas territories - all differing in their languages, geographies, and fluctuating political relationships with the crown - will permit fruitful comparison. The ascription of songs - to one particular class, linguistic group, or to a sphere of cross-class cultural production - sheds light on conclusions we can draw about the participation of wider society in politics. My research will thus provide an opportunity to unveil a broader geographical and chronological history of popular involvement, and, more generally, to suggest usable methods to fill in gaps left by the ephemeral nature of the sources in question and lack of information about audience or reception.The thesis will engage with historical studies of culture as appropriation, or as what Peter Burke labels the 'Three Rs': re-employment, re-enactment, and reconstruction. Scholars, such as Darnton and Hammond, have produced digital recordings to enrich their work on Parisian street songs, engaging in cultural reappropriation themselves. However, both projects have exhibited a lack of self-evaluation of this process and a lack of awareness about what the practices of musicians today might reveal. My project will explore this potential, through recording and analysing performances of the songs included in my thesis. Considering different modern-day interpretations of this material could constitute a valuable method for examining the mechanisms of historical consumption and for gauging practices of popular participation. On a more practical level, this inquiry will promote valuable interchange between historians and musicians. It will strive not only to suggest a useful framework for examining the mechanics of historical consumption, but also to scrutinise current practices of 'historically-informed' performance. As such, this thesis will provide an example of pioneering interdisciplinary scholarship, while also revealing much about the history of popular political participation in the eighteenth-century francophone world.