Passing Presences: Street Lighting as 'Site of Action' in July Monarchy Paris

Blending a cultural studies approach with scenic spatial analysis, this article provides the first detailed examination of the réverbère à l'huile . in French cultural productions of the early nineteenth century. An emblematic part of the pre-Haussmannian cityscape at a critical historical juncture when street lighting shifts from oil to gas, I argue that artists and writers in the 1830s and 1840s exploit the impending obsolescence of this piece of background street furniture to transform it into a 'site of action' and interrogate the aesthetics of that which usually passes unnoticed in the urban landscape. Through a range of examples from caricature, tableaux de mœurs and popular novels, the spectacular potential of the réverbère à l'huile in texts and images is unpicked to reveal a symbolic spotlight for marginalisation in an age of post-revolutionary social confusion. The mid-nineteenth-century oil lantern thus provides a locus for reflections on the poetic potential of material objects, night as space, as well as invisibility in the urban landscape.