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Charivari or the Historicising of a Question |
55www.jrfm.eu
2018, 4/2, 55–66
Arno Haldemann
Charivari or the Historicising of a Question
The Irrelevance of Romantic Love for the
Audio-Visual Performance of Marriage in Bern
in the 18th and 19th Centuries
ABSTRACT
Citing Oscar Wilde, in their call for papers the editors of this volume ask the question
“Who, being loved, is poor?” On a meta-theoretical level, this article seeks to contextualize
this question and its citation socially. On an empirical level, it contrasts the socially highly
determined question and its implicit presuppositions with the findings of a local case study
from the canton of Bern in the 18th and 19th centuries. When we examine precarious mar-
riages through petitions for dispensation from the preacher’s threefold reading of the
banns from the pulpit, the collective audio-visual dimension of marriages in an agrarian
society with scarce resources becomes apparent. With the petitions, the couples tried to
avoid attention and thus escape the communal tribunal of a charivari and the like. In Bern,
the material and media dimension of weddings were largely governed by local standards.
Charivaris were audio-visual means for society to communicate shared values regarding
marriage. An expression of the locally accentuated moral economy, they did not reflect
romantic ideals of love. The performance of weddings as large and public rituals was a
communal compulsion rather than the expression of an individualistic and therefore crea-
tive event. The performative wedding as the epitome of individualism is a very young his-
torical development and strongly linked to a late-modern bourgeois culture of singularity.
KEYWORDS
Oscar Wilde, Bern, Charivari, marriage, romantic love, bourgeoise culture, individual-
ism, intimacy, agrarian society, collective performance, codes of communication
BIOGRAPHY
Arno Haldemann received his education in history and religious studies at the Univer-
sities of Bern and at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in Paris. In his PhD
project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, he is researching the genesis
of civil marriage in the Swiss Canton of Bern between 1742 and 1865. He focuses on the
interaction of deviant subaltern actors wanting to get married, resistive local communi-
ties, families and corporations and the arbitrating Bernese marriage tribunal. Thus, he in-
vestigates the interrelation of actor’s agency, communal customary legal and moral con-
cepts and contemporary population policy. Arno Haldemann is a member of the Gradu-
ate School of the Humanities at the Walter Benjamin Kolleg of the University of Bern.
DOI: 10.25364/05.4:2018.2.4
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 04/02
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2018
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 135
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM