Seeing Justice Done: The Age of Spectacular Capital Punishment in France
Paul Friedland
Abstract
From the early Middle Ages to the 20th century, capital punishment in France, as in many other countries, was staged before large crowds of spectators. This book traces the theory and practice of public executions over time from the perspective of the executioners and government officials who staged them, as well as from the vantage point of the many thousands who came to “see justice done.” While penal theorists often stressed that the fundamental purpose of public punishment was to strike fear in the hearts of spectators, the eagerness with which crowds flocked to executions and the extent t ... More
From the early Middle Ages to the 20th century, capital punishment in France, as in many other countries, was staged before large crowds of spectators. This book traces the theory and practice of public executions over time from the perspective of the executioners and government officials who staged them, as well as from the vantage point of the many thousands who came to “see justice done.” While penal theorists often stressed that the fundamental purpose of public punishment was to strike fear in the hearts of spectators, the eagerness with which crowds flocked to executions and the extent to which spectators actually enjoyed the spectacle of suffering suggests that there was a wide gulf between theoretical intentions and actual experiences. Moreover, animal executions and the execution of effigies and corpses point to an enduring ritual function that had little to do with exemplary deterrence. In the eighteenth century, when a revolution in sensibilities made it unseemly for individuals to take pleasure in or even witness the suffering of others, capital punishment became the target of penal reform. From the invention of the guillotine, which reduced the moment of death to the blink of an eye, to the 1939 decree which moved executions behind prison walls, the death penalty in France was systematically stripped of its spectacular elements.
Keywords:
capital punishment,
death penalty,
guillotine,
spectacle,
executioners,
animal executions,
sensibilities,
executions,
public executions,
spectators,
public punishment
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199592692 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592692.001.0001 |
