An English cover-up: masks, murders, and English cruelty in Goncourt, Lorrain, and Schwob

Fin-de-siècle writers from diverse disciplines were drawn to the seductive potential of masks and disguise; mask-wearing characters of indefinite identity, indeterminate gender, and insecure psychology proliferate in their texts. However, when characters are designated as English in such stories, they are also, and with remarkable frequency, associated with cruelty or murder: the mask-wielding murderers of Marcel Schwob’s ‘MM. Burke et Hare, Assassins’ carry out their crimes in Britain upon British victims; Edmond de Goncourt weaves his theatrical narrative around the mask-like demeanour of Lord Annandale in La Faustin; and Jean Lorrain’s malicious Lord Ethal exacerbates the Duc de Fréneuse’s perverse obsessions with masks in Monsieur de Phocas. This article explores this unexpected correlation, and examines the ways that English masks are used as narrative devices – at once to mould and play with national distinctions, and to reflect upon the psychological state of the French subject

Vérification de pouvoirs lors de la séance du 4 juillet 1789

Yvernault Sylvain, JOUBERT Pierre Matthieu. Vérification de pouvoirs lors de la séance du 4 juillet 1789. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome VIII - Du 5 mai 1789 au 15 septembre 1789. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1875. p. 188

Lecture de différentes adresses, lors de la séance du 4 juillet 1789

Yvernault Sylvain, JOUBERT Pierre Matthieu. Lecture de différentes adresses, lors de la séance du 4 juillet 1789. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome VIII - Du 5 mai 1789 au 15 septembre 1789. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1875. pp. 188-189