Review of J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase (London: Secker & Warburg, 1960)

Wight noted that in an earlier book, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, Professor Talmon identified Rousseau as the ‘main source’ of ‘the totalitarian messianism of the French Revolution’. In this sequel he examines ‘the vast effervescence of utopian political thought between 1815 and 1848, which produced modern nationalism and Communism’. He aims to place the genesis of Marxism ‘in a wider historical setting than histories of socialism usually supply, against a background not only of Owen and Fourier, Fichte and Hegel, but of the whole romantic range of the Saint-Simonists and Lamennais, Michelet, Mazzini, and Mickiewicz’. The complex outcome is ‘the world we still live in, where national particularities seek to justify themselves in the service of a universal ideal, but revolutionary war makes national frontiers irrelevant; where national uniqueness is the strongest adversary of international revolution, nationalism finds its fulfilment by turning socialist, and socialism cannot establish itself except within national boundaries’.

Wordsworth’s Lucy poems as the Reflections of the French Revolution: A New Historicist Study

The current study takes a New Historic outlook toward William Wordsworth’s the “Lucy Poems” and believes that by a minute scrutiny of these poems we can expose the power structure and the dominant discourses that according to New Historicism have shaped the poet’s character, society and world. Accordingly, the paper suggests that the poet through symbolic and non-symbolic ways has embedded historical and political facts in these poems. To do so, the research will reveal some controversial correspondences among these poems, William Wordsworth’s life and historical facts of the French Revolution. To support this idea, the study will bring quotations not only from modern conspicuous literary critics but also from the poets and Romantic contemporaries to show how the historical and political discourses of the period have greatly influenced both William Wordsworth and even the literature of the whole era, i.e., Romanticism. As a matter of fact, this research intends to connect the “Lucy Poems” to the contemporary historical context and the poet’s ideals of the Revolution in France. The findings, however, reveal that William Wordsworth has been submissive to the historical events of his time.

Genesis and Historical Sense of the Motto “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”

The study is devoted to the formation of the motto of the French Revolution – Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The hypotheses as to its emergence are considered, notably the invention of the triad by J.Locke, F.Fénelon, French enlighteners and Masons. Based on the analysis of the texts pertaining to the alleged authors of the motto, it is concluded that its spread was taking place only during the Revolution. The meaning of liberty, equality and fraternity is seen as an expression of the fundamental values of the Modern Age; the interdependence of these concepts is demonstrated.