The Antechamber Toward a History of Waiting

"Written with imagination and erudition, this delightful book fills a lacuna in the growing literature on time and temporality while also making an important contribution to the fields of historical anthropology, the history of emotions, and the history of art and architecture."-Daniel Jütte, New York University "Puff does for eighteenth-century European elites what we all need to do for ourselves now: consider carefully, critically, and with some degree of humor how, why, and where we wait. This beautiful book provides new historical insight into early modern mentalités."-Annabel Wharton, Duke University "Puff's history of the antechamber reminds us how supple and strategic waiting can be, a form of practice for those attuned to time's affordances. The book you never knew you were waiting for, this is cultural history at its best."-Mitchell Merback, Johns Hopkins University "[The Antechamber] reaches far beyond its historical subject and surprises us by discovering a surfeit of meaning and possibility in this seemingly most mundane experience."-Karin Schutjer, Colloquia Germanica "Helmut Puff's The Antechamber: Toward a History of Waiting, is a creative and ambitious book that brings to life mentalities, individuals, and the spaces designed to contain them. Puff's ability to bring these liminal sites into the foreground grants a wonderful methodology for understanding time, culture, and power relations in the early modern world."-Sarah Bernhardt, Journal of Early Modern History