Art Inquiries
Abstract
This article examines printed depictions of Napoleon Bonaparte’s exhumed corpse in conjunction with Romantic historical practice in nineteenth-century France. Current studies on history in the Romantic age emphasize Romantic historicism’s link to a widespread and frustrated yearning for direct access to the past that will settle the upheavals of the revolutionary period. This study considers how the corpse and its representations fulfill the desire for direct access to the past but, in doing so, also contributes to a proliferation of individual understandings of the past—and future. Through an analysis of representations of the corpse, their sources, and their connection to Romantic historicism and modern theories on the agency of objects and dead bodies, it argues that certain depictions of the corpse created space for viewers to exercise agency as political actors and as historians in their own right. Further, that in doing so, they provided a counterpoint to strictly curated versions of history provided by the July Monarchy government.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.60649/ewv4-j603
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Adams, Alissa R.. "Napoleon’s Corpse and the Subversion of Historical and Political Authority." 19, 1 (2024). https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/artinquiries_secacart/vol19/iss1/3
Included in
Architectural History and Criticism Commons, Art and Design Commons, Art Practice Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Museum Studies Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons
