La nature citadine : promenades plantées et jardins publics en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

Résumé En

Nature in the City : Tree-Lined Promenades and Public Gardens in France in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Starting in the seventeenth century, tree-lined promenades and public gardens became a fixture of cities throughout France. New codes of leisurely walking were established. Conforming to preset models, these spaces were systematically implemented as part of urban embellishment policies, and became characteristic elements of the national landscape. Parallel to the normalization of forms and uses a new vocabulary developed. The diversity of this lexicon has rarely been studied, leading to a great number of confusions as demonstrated by historiography. This essay intends to define and distinguish the various meanings covered by the terminology designating public gardens and promenades in French (promenoir, promenade, mail, cours, jardin, jardin public, rempart and boulevard planté), using as source material period dictionaries, travel memoirs, and tourist guides. Purporting to be exact, these texts in fact contain many approximations, and even contradictions, whose close study provides rich insights into the urban imaginary associated with the promenade.