Kinship and Transmission within the French Nobility, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The Case of the Vassé

Bibliographic Data

ID8939864
AuthorsÉlie Haddad (0000-0002-7384-1631, corresponding author)
TranslatorsWilliam A S Brown
Year2015
Volume38
Issue4
Pages567-591
Publication date2015-09-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrench Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-1071 • E-ISSN: 1527-5493
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00161071-3113803
OpenAlexW1634698737
LanguageEN
Citations received2

This article analyzes transformations of domestic organization, transmission of material and symbolic goods, and representations of the “house” (after Claude Lévi-Strauss) by examining the Vassé, a provincial noble family living in the Maine and at Paris, at court, or in the army, depending on the circumstances. Articulating the social history and anthropology of kinship shows the fundamentally cognatic character of kinship among the nobility: the importance of marriage, and transmission through women, but also the social processes that led to an extreme valorization of the patrilineage. In the process it also shows how the noble “house” was enfeebled by the simultaneous reinforcement of patrilineality and loosening of the relationship to seigneuries and property, which reduced the place of goods in family continuity in favor of blood ties, resulting in a system different from the sixteenth-century system of multiple alliances and the establishment of several heirs

Character (mathematics · Genealogy · Institution · Kinship · Nobility · Political science · Property (philosophy · Social science · Sociology · Transmission (telecommunications · Anthropology · Engineering · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Medieval and Early Modern Justice · Philosophy

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