2026-09-22T15:26:06Z https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/127234 2025-03-29 col_2142_5131 col_2142_14792 com_2142_5130 com_2142_814 com_2142_8903

Eighteenth-century France Old Regime Masks eng application/pdf en text Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2025-03-28 without embargo terms The student, Jun Huang, accepted the attached license on 2024-11-27 at 22:01. The student, Jun Huang, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2024-11-27 at 22:10. This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2024-12-03 at 09:33. DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #21418 on 2025-03-28 at 14:27:15 Seventeenth-century France Masks and masking practices in old regime France and the French Revolution Huang, Jun 2024-12-03 Crowston, Clare H Crowston, Clare H Koslofsky, Craig Symes, Carol Micale, Mark This dissertation explores masks and masking practices in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period characterized by a rich and multi-faceted tradition of masking, including court ballets, theatrical performances, masked balls, carnivals, and sun screening. This culture of masking expanded dramatically since the reign of Louis XIV, as it became profoundly intertwined with the spectacular performances and construction of absolutist monarchical power. The vital role of masks in the political culture of absolutism not only gave rise to mask makers— a group of artisans whose significance in ancien régime France has been hitherto overlooked by historians—but also fueled the use of the word “mask” as a rhetorical symbol of artifice, secrecy, and hypocrisy in debates over authenticity, social order and disorder, and, more generally, human nature in the eighteenth century, particularly after the Enlightenment. The socio-racial realities of the Old Regime also contributed to the growth of masking practices during this period, as French women of high social status and wealth began to wear black masks to signal and accentuate their white complexions, thereby distinguishing themselves from people of African origins—both free and enslaved, at home and abroad. The increasing masking practices and mask-related discourses in the Old Regime explains the ubiquity of the metaphors of “masking” and “unmasking” in the consistent and widespread calls for authenticity and total transparency in the French Revolution. 2024-12 Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127234 Copyright 2024 Jun Huang Ph.D. Dissertation History History University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign