The Smell of 18th-Century Paris in Louis Sébastien Mercier’s Tableau de Paris

Abstract

The paper shows the literary representation of the French capital at the end of the 18th century, based on Louis Sébastien Mercier’s main work, the Tableau de Paris (Picture of Paris), published between 1781 and 1788. Mercier’s work reveals the importance of sensorial impressions, the almost naturalistic depiction of sights, sounds and above-all smells in 18th-century Paris. After an analysis of the genre of Tableau de Paris, the paper attempts to emphasize the unjustly marginalised role of the stench in Paris in the last days of the Ancien Régime.