French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Farge, Forgotten Lives: At the Heart of the Eighteenth Century
History, Politics and Society
Forgotten Lives: At the Heart of the Eighteenth Century
Arlette FARGE
La Découverte, September 2019
***
18 euros
304 pages
ISBN: 9782348045738
***
DESCRIPTION:
How can we capture forgotten lives, those about which we know nothing? How can we reconstruct as closely as possible the atmosphere of an era, not with broad brushstrokes, but from the thousand tiny events caught at the very heart of daily life, as if in an Impressionist painting?
Here, Arlette Farge offers what are called the researcher's "scraps" or "remnants": those archival fragments deemed unclassifiable in inventories, abandoned because they lie outside the historian's current concerns. These are snapshots that reveal the social, emotional, and political life of the Age of Enlightenment. Priests, police officers, women, workers, servants, and artisans jostle together within them.
From these archives emerge images of the working body, of pain, of care, but also of rebellious movements, love letters, and the language of desire, violence, or compassion.
The sound of the wave, Leibniz explained, results from the billions of droplets that compose it; Arlette Farge immerses her reader in the intimacy of these forgotten lives. A new way of writing history.
Arlette Farge is a historian specializing in the 18th century. She has published numerous works, among which are Fragile Lives: Violence, Power and Solidarity in Eighteenth-Century Paris, The Allure of the Archives, and, with Michel Foucault, Disorderly Families: Lettres de Cachet in the Bastille Archives in the Eighteenth Century.
***
Visit the publisher's website...
*
You can read an initial article on this work on Diacritik.com… or a second one…
And on nonfiction.fr:
Arlette Farge is a prominent French historian renowned for her pioneering work on the social and cultural history of the eighteenth century, particularly concerning the lives of ordinary people in Paris. Associated with the traditions of microhistory and the history of mentalities, her scholarship often investigates police archives, judicial records, and administrative fragments to recover the voices of marginalized individuals. Alongside her individual monographs, she collaborated with philosopher Michel Foucault on studies of eighteenth-century family dynamics and state power, cementing her influence in modern historiography.
This book serves as an invaluable resource for students, researchers, and general readers interested in the Age of Enlightenment, social history, and archival methodology. By examining the texture of everyday existence—from labor and domestic care to rebellion and romantic desire—the work addresses fundamental questions about how historians construct narratives from incomplete evidence. It illuminates the sensory and emotional worlds of past societies, offering fresh perspectives to anyone seeking to understand the complex realities of eighteenth-century urban life beyond traditional political histories.
"The Thousand and One Lives of 18th-Century Paris", by Marie Ranquet (published online on December 13, 2019).