Writing Between the Lines

The Mentelles ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph Paul Runyon
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

John Bradford, editor of the Kentucky Gazette, publishes Charlotte's translation of a text probably by Gabriel Sénac de Meilhan on the fate of aristocrats who fled the French Revolution for Germany, England, and elsewhere. It bears the title Voyages, Adventures and Situation of the French Emigrants and appears in 1800. In her Introduction to the work, and in footnotes and subtle alterations of the text, Charlotte takes a feminist stand, alludes to her own experience in Gallipolis, and argues that the Revolution has suffered unjust criticism. She castigates Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and the Count of Artois, even though the latter had been Edme Mentelle's patron. Bradford in the Kentucky Gazette likewise maintains a pro-French position.

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ambrogio Caiani
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Phase ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Passive Resistance ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Complex Question ◽  
The French Revolution

The important role played by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the radicalization of the early phase of the French Revolution has never been in doubt. Most histories continue to focus on the regal couple’s real, and supposed, role in fomenting counter-revolution at home and especially abroad. This chapter engages with the complex question of the dwindling fortunes of Louis XVI’s monarchy from a more domestic angle. It focuses on that neglected, though crucial, year of 1790 which witnessed the failure to erect a viable constitutional settlement. It became impossible to accommodate both Crown and assembly in a viable working relationship. Essentially, the king’s distrust for the deputies, who had little by little arrogated his remaining powers, proved insurmountable. The monarchy’s passive resistance to the revolution’s early reform programme and political culture became increasingly unpopular. This created a radicalized and tension-filled atmosphere which pushed the revolution into hitherto unexpected directions.

The French Revolution

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-21
Author(s):  
Samuel Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Substantial Proportion ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
To Come ◽  
Financial Base ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter evaluates the causes of the French Revolution. The problem was not that Louis XVI was particularly wasteful, although he had a lavish lifestyle at Versailles. The issue was instead one of crushing military necessity. Before the revolution, France was dealing with invasion threats from Spain and England and was spending over twice as much as had been spent on the Seven Years' War. However, France was fiscally crippled by the fact that a substantial proportion of its financial base was exempt from paying taxes. The disputes within the elite about who was going to come up with the money to pay for extra military expenses led to revolution. The revolutionaries found divided conservative forces, as well as members of the elite willing to oppose the king if this would help them win their battles about future tax obligations. The result was the overthrow of the king and the entire noble class. But taxes were not the whole story: there was also a rising capitalist middle class resentful of the superior status of the aristocracy.

scholarly journals Evolving Loyalties: A Provincial Printer in Revolutionary Bordeaux1

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane McLeod
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The author examines the career of Simon Lacourt, a Bordeaux printer who was guillotined during the French Revolution, and explores the ways in which printers’ milieu and patrons determined their printing choices. Lacourt -- the last in a long line of King’s printers in Bordeaux -- was one of the most privileged and connected printers in the reign of Louis XVI when he made the move into revolutionary printing and became a newspaper printer and the official printer for the Department of the Gironde. His printing business prospered until the summer of 1793 when he became the official printer of the commission populaire, the body that led the federalist revolt in Bordeaux, a fateful decision dictated by his social, familial and political milieu and one that left him vulnerable after the revolt failed. During his trial he was accused of trying to destroy his country and his fate raises questions about printer responsibility during the Revolution.

scholarly journals The Flight of Louis XVI. to Varennes. a Criticism of Carlyle

1886 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-341
Author(s):  
Oscar Browning
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
The Other ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
History Of ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
The One ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The arrest of Louis XVI. during his flight from Paris to Montmédy was one of the most important events in the history of the French Revolution, and probably one of the most important in the history of France. It also forms one of the best known and most admired portions of Carlyle's history of the Revolution. It occupies a whole book of the second volume, fifty-four pages of the Library edition. It may therefore be taken as a fair specimen of Carlyle's style, both in its strength and in its weakness. A careful examination of his narrative from a purely prosaic standpoint will throw light on his manner of composition. It may be said that it is un-gracious to criticise in the petty details of fact a narrative which has stirred so many hearts by its tragic pathos, and which in its broad outlines is consistent with the truth. But here lies the whole distinction between the historical poem and the historical novel on the one side, and history proper on the other. Carlyle would have said, if he had been asked, that his one object in writing history was to tell the truth. It is for this reason that he multiplies fact upon fact and detail upon detail, until he has brought the scene vividly before the eyes of the reader. His accuracy can be trusted where he has visited the scenes which he describes, and where he is not carried away by preconceived prejudices or ideas.In history truth is always more tragic and more moving than fiction.

The Revolutionizing of the Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
French Government ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

In 1792, the French Revolution became a thing in itself, an uncontrollable force that might eventually spend itself but which no one could direct or guide. The governments set up in Paris in the following years all faced the problem of holding together against forces more revolutionary than themselves. This chapter distinguishes two such forces for analytical purposes. There was a popular upheaval, an upsurge from below, sans-culottisme, which occurred only in France. Second, there was the “international” revolutionary agitation, which was not international in any strict sense, but only concurrent within the boundaries of various states as then organized. From the French point of view these were the “foreign” revolutionaries or sympathizers. The most radical of the “foreign” revolutionaries were seldom more than advanced political democrats. Repeatedly, however, from 1792 to 1799, these two forces tended to converge into one force in opposition to the French government of the moment.

‘The greatest irregular’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Thomas Carlyle claimed that his history of the French Revolution was ‘a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution …’. This chapter considers his stylistic approaches to creating the illusion of immediacy: his presentation of seemingly unmediated fact through the transformation of memoir and other kinds of historical record into a compelling dramatic narrative. Closely examining the ways in which he worked biographical anecdote into the fabric of his text raises questions about Carlyle’s wider historical purposes. Pressing the question of what it means to think through style, or to distinguish expressive emotive writing from abstract understanding, is an opportunity to reconsider Carlyle’s relation to his predecessors and contemporaries writing on the Revolution in English.

The Glory and the Sorrow

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Tackett
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Small Time ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Ordinary Citizen ◽  
Best Friend ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Intermediary ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The book describes the life and the world of a small-time lawyer, Adrien-Joseph Colson, who lived in central Paris from the end of the Old Regime through the first eight years of the French Revolution. It is based on over a thousand letters written by Colson about twice a week to his best friend living in the French province of Berry. By means of this correspondence, and of a variety of other sources, the book examines what it was like for an “ordinary citizen” to live through extraordinary times, and how Colson, in his position as a “social and cultural intermediary,” can provide insight into the life of a whole neighborhood on the central Right Bank, both before and during the Revolution. It explores the day-to-day experience of the Revolution: not only the thrill, the joy, and the enthusiasm, but also the uncertainty, the confusion, the anxiety, the disappointments—often all mixed together. It also throws light on some of the questions long debated by historians concerning the origins, the radicalization, the growth of violence, and the end of that Revolution.

Contemporary visions of France: the Revolution, Women and History: A Summary of the 1989 Fall Colloquia, New York University’s Institute of French Studies

1990 ◽  
Vol 10 (x) ◽  
pp. 287-307
Author(s):  
Richard Cicchillo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
French Society ◽  
French Studies ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The seven colloquia held at New York University’s Institute of French Studies during the Fall 1989 semester offered some new perspectives on the French Revolution, and took stock of various elements of French Society and history two hundred years after the taking of the Bastille.

Sovereignty, Politics, and Reason in the Post-Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-162
Author(s):  
James Livesey
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
International Order ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter focuses on the French Revolution as one of the most important moments in the entangled history of local cosmopolitanisms. Such ideas as rights, property, and democracy were consciously articulated during the Revolution as universals with cosmopolitan spheres of application, and those ideas had profound global consequences over the following two centuries. Alongside this impact on states and legal structures, the Revolution also had direct effects in every community in France and touched communities outside the hexagon, from India to Ireland. The Revolution transformed the most general contexts, putting the nation-state rather than empire as the organizing principle at the heart of the international order, but it also put the most intimate experiences, such as family and emotion, under new light. The drama of the Revolution exemplified the power of ideas and the ambition to create a rational political order.

Innovative Recent Perspectives

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-78
Author(s):  
Robert Chazan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter considers Salo Baron's writings on Jewish history. Recent historians have come to reject the supernaturally grounded assumption of unending Jewish suffering during the supposed third exile; many of them have also distanced themselves from the modern and naturalistic continuations of this sense of interminable Jewish suffering. The first major challenge to the received wisdom came in 1928 from Salo Baron, newly arrived in the United States from his native Europe. In an essay titled “Ghetto and Emancipation: Shall We Revisit the Traditional View?” he undertook a fairly limited assault on traditional Jewish thinking about exilic pain. Focusing on the French Revolution and the beginnings of the process of emancipation of Western Jewry, Baron examined the centuries immediately preceding the revolution and the immediate post-Emancipation period. He argued that the former was nowhere near so horrific as usually projected and that the latter was nowhere near so idyllic.

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