Alain Corbin (born January 12, 1936 in Lonlay-l'Abbaye) is a French historian. He is a specialist of the 19th century in France and in microhistory.

Trained in the Annales School, Corbin's work has moved away from the large-scale collective structures studied by Fernand Braudel towards a history of sensibilities which is closer to Lucien Febvre's history of mentalités. His books have explored the histories of such subjects as male desire and pros*ution, sensory experience of smell and sound, and the 1870 burning of a young nobleman in a Dordogne village.

Works

• Les filles de noce: Misère sexuelle et pros*ution au XIXe siècle, 1978
  • Translation: Women for Hire: Pros*ution and Sexuality in France after 1850, (published 1996)
• Le territoire du vide: L'occident et le désir du rivage (1750-1840), 1978
  • Translation: The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750-1840, (published 1994)
• Le miasme et la jonquille: L'odorat et l'imaginaire social, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles, 1982
  • Translation: The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination, (published 1988)
• Le village des "cannibales", 1986
  • Translation: The Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870, (published 1993)
• Le cloches de la terre: Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIXe siècle, 1994
  • Translation: Village bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th-century French Countryside, (published 1998)
• Le temps, le désir et l'horreur, 1995
  • Translation: Time, Desire, and Horror: Towards a History of the Senses, (published 1995)
• Le monde retrouvé de Louis-François Pinagot: Sur les traces d'un inconnu (1798-1876), 1998
  • Translation: The Life of an Unknown: The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker in Nineteenth-century France, (published 2001)
• Histoire du silence: de la Renaissance à nos jours, 2018
  • Translation: A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day, (published 2018)

Bibliography

• For a general overview on his work, see S. Godfrey "Alain Corbin:: Making Sense of French History:», French Historical Studies, vol. 25, n° 2, 2002, p.:381-398
• See also Dominique kalifa, "L’expérience, le désir et l’histoire. Alain Corbin ou le tournant culturel silencieux", in “Alain Corbin and the writing of History”, French Politics, Culture & Society, vol. 22, n° 2, 2004, p.:14-25.

References