• Representing heritage and loss on the Brittany coast: sites, things and absence

    Author(s):
    Maura Coughlin (see profile)
    Date:
    2012
    Subject(s):
    French literature, Death, Museums
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Charles Cottet, Pierre Loti, Maritime history
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M63J90
    Abstract:
    This is an essay about the interplay of objects, art and visual culture in several community museums and historical sites dedicated to local social history in coastal Brittany. There, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Breton maritime culture invented a range of compensatory ritual objects, sites and practices to account for loss of life at sea. The presentation of this material culture of mourning in small museums, regional museums and ecomuseums on the Breton North Coast and the islands of Sein and Ouessant are examined in this essay. These material objects once bore material witness to crucial moments in the life of the family and today serve to represent the community’s collective memories and to narrate the community’s heritage to the outside world. In several cases examined in this essay, literary representations, art and visual culture are compared to heritage sites and museums. Methodologies are drawn from social art history, studies of tourism and collecting, museum studies, material culture studies and feminist interests in the politics of the everyday.
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Journal article    
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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