Durchdringend

Abstract

The English title of Alain Corbin's classic study The Foul and the Fragrant hits the nail on the head: Smells are commonly characterized as evoking strong emotions and are highly dichotomized. They are perceived either as pleasant for the person smelling them, or as stinking, penetrating, and disgusting. This article explores the background of the dichotomy of olfactory emotions, focusing on the field of commerce and the significance of odors in early modern Warenkunden-books consisting of lists of commodities detailing their characteristics and quality. Analyzing how smells were described in this context can, on the one hand, further reveal the historical process of the naturalization of the dichotomy triggering a ref lection on its impact on the use of the emotional capacities of smell for social discrimination. On the other hand, it shows that the olfactory worlds of pre-modern commodity practices and commodity knowledge were considerably more complex. Historical sources can thus help to elaborate alternatives to the emotional and analytical dichotomization of olfaction.