When words meet maps experiencing 18th century Lyon with L. Michon's Memoires

Résumé En

From 1715 to 1744, Léonard Michon chronicles in seven volumes of his Mémoires the daily life of Lyon's bourgeoisie. Through the description of hundreds of political, religious or cultural events, we experience a living picture of 18th century Lyon which was, at that time, the second town of the french kingdom and a flourishing industrial center at the crossroads of South East Europe. Not only can we understand the political and social aspects of the city (how power and family ties are deeply imbricated) but also the urban developments, through major planning decisions (building's alignments, opening or enlarging new streets, the construction of Place Bellecour or river docks). In order to extract and analyse geographical references in historical materials, the Pôle histoire numérique of the laboratory LARHRA developped an information system helping researchers and students to collect and share geo-historical digital objects. Combined with the project of editing a XML version of Léonard Michon's Mémoires, this methodology allows us to interlink named entities with location informations in order to produce geographical and quantitative analysis. In this contribution, we would like to present maps and GIS results that, on the one hand, help the readers to discover the richness of this testimony and, on the other hand, show the multifaceted city of Lyon depicted by one of its own inhabitants ; leeding to a unique, intimate but also partial and passionate outlook.