Smells
A Cultural History of Odours in Early Modern Times

Robert Muchembled (Author), Susan Pickford (Translated by)

9781509536788, Polity Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 May 2020

260 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.386 kg

“Mr. Muchembled’s fine-grained and evocative research shows how eloquent smell can be in helping us understand the past.” 
The Wall Street Journal

Why is our sense of smell so under-appreciated?  We tend to think of smell as a vestigial remnant of our pre-human past, doomed to gradual extinction, and we go to great lengths to eliminate smells from our environment, suppressing body odour, bad breath and other smells.  Living in a relatively odour-free environment has numbed us to the importance that smells have always had in human history and culture.

In this major new book Robert Muchembled restores smell to its rightful place as one of our most important senses and examines the transformation of smells in the West from the Renaissance to the beginning of the 19th century.  He shows that in earlier centuries, the air in towns and cities was often saturated with nauseating emissions and dangerous pollution.  Having little choice but to see and smell faeces and urine on a daily basis, people showed little revulsion; until the 1620s, literature and poetry delighted in excreta which now disgust us. The smell of excrement and body odours were formative aspects of eroticism and sexuality, for the social elite and the popular classes alike.  At the same time, medicine explained outbreaks of plague by Satan's poisonous breath corrupting the air.  Amber, musk and civet came to be seen as vital bulwarks against the devil's breath: scents were worn like armour against the plague.  The disappearance of the plague after 1720 and the sharp decline in fear of the devil meant there was no longer any point in using perfumes to fight the forces of evil, paving the way for the olfactory revolution of the 18th century when softer, sweeter perfumes, often with floral and fruity scents, came into fashion, reflecting new norms of femininity and a gentler vision of nature.  

This rich cultural history of an under-appreciated sense will be appeal to a wide readership.

Table of Contents


Table of illustrations 

Introduction

Chapter one: Our unique sense of smell

Is science always objective?     

A sense of danger, emotions, and delight
     
Chapter 2: A Pervasive stench    

The foul air of medieval towns   

Urban cess pits 

The smell of profit   

Pollutant trades 

Countryside smells    

Chapter three: Joyous matter
     
A scholarly culture of scatology 

Aromatic blasons 

Humour in the conte   

The Way to Succeed    

Odorous wind    

Chapter four: Scent of a woman
    
Demonising the smell of women    

When ladies did not smell of roses    

At arm's length 

Guilty women    

A breath of eroticism
  
The gutter press 

A literary stink 

Death and the old woman

Demonic pleasure 

Chapter five: The Devil's breath
  
Venomous vapours 

Plague-ridden towns   

Perfume as armour     

Perfumed rituals 

Rue, vinegar and tobacco
     
Pomanders  

Chapter six: Musky scents
    
Fountains of youth    

Ambergris, musk and civet
    
The perfumed glove trade   

The eroticism of leather   

Nothing new under the Sun King?
   
Drawing death's sting 

The great animal slaughter
   
Chapter seven: Civilising floral essences
    
The perfume revolution     

Luxuriating in baths of scent    

Sensual faces   

Bodily hair care 

The scent of powder   

The emperor's perfumer     

Conclusion 

Bibliography

     A note on quotations

     Principle manuscript sources

     Primary sources

     Selected bibliography

Subject Areas: History [HB]