88

This paper proposes to examine a practice linked, in its most common forms, to the funerary transition and transformations of cemeteries in 19th century France: exhumation. This consists in exhuming a body buried in a temporary grave in order to re-inter it in a family grave, that has in the meantime been purchased and endowed with a monument.Regulations require the a priori painful confrontation between the corpse and the kin of the deceased, whose presence is necessary. Is it possible to turn ordinary exhumations into touching scenes, in keeping with the melancholy of the cemetery as fashioned by the Romantics, and to transcend their triviality? An examination of two types of exhumation stories, one taken from one of the many guides for visitors to cemeteries, the other from brochures promoting embalming, shows that this kind of storytelling is possible, provided that it has an edifying dimension, or that it provides fodder for a promotional argument closely attuned to the new sensibilities.