Cultural Origins

Beginning in the 1980s, historians began looking at the French Revolution through the lens of culture. Culture was a broad concept, and there was much debate over what it encompassed. In general, it emphasised meaning and practices. By the late 1980s, 'public opinion' became a focal point for studying both the content of meaning (people's values, ideas and convictions) and the way meaning was produced and spread through society. Culture and public opinion offered historians new terrain upon which to understand the Revolution's origins. Yet, they also perpetuated interpretive threads that can be traced back to Tocqueville and the Marxist historians. By the late 1990s, historians were beginning to extend cultural history to examine the emotions in order to explain human action of the past.

Beaumarchais's Marriage of Figaro, which was performed in Paris in 1784, offers a revealing window to explore these elements of cultural history: changing attitudes about hierarchy, equality, gender relations and political freedom. It was a box-office hit, running for three years, and would soon inspire Mozart's opera. But the play was highly controversial. It took several years to receive authorisation to be performed by the authorities.

Core primary readings

• * Beaumarchais, The Marriage of FigaroLink opens in a new window (read entire play, library e-version at the link - NB: the Talis link is incorrect... use this one).

Core secondary reading

• William H. Sewell, Jr. 'The Parisian Promenades' (ch 5) in Capitalism and the Emergence of Civic Equality in Eighteenth-century France (2021)

Questions

1. In what way can The Marriage of Figaro be seen to reveal social tensions of the Ancien Régime?

2. What do you think made the play controversial? Why do you think elite opinion was divided over it?

3. How do you see emotion and sentiment being used in the play? What do they reveal about late Ancien Régime culture?

4. Sewell reading: Public Opinion used to be thought of as 'political' and not particularly economic. How does Sewell try to connect the economic, the public sphere (promenades) and a political revolution together?

Optional primary readings

· Louis XV, ‘A Royal Reprimand’, Peter Jones, FR in S&P Perspective, pp. 102.

· Lamoignon, ‘Fundamental Laws according to the Parlement of Paris’, pp. 103-104.

· Sieyès, ‘Defining the Nation’, Peter Jones, pp. 104-105.

· Parlement of Paris, ‘Fixing the Framework for the Estates General’, pp. 105-106.

· * Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, letters iv, v, vi, vii, viii.

· * A. Young, Travels in France in the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789, 17-27 May and 9-24 October 1787 entries

· * "Letter from a Gentleman in Paris to His Friend in London," in A Particular and Authentic Narration of the Life, Examination, Torture, and Execution of Robert Francis Damien [sic], trans. Thomas Jones (London, 1757).

Suggested secondary readings

General

R. Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (1991: esp. intro & concl., chs. 1,2, 7,8)

R. Darnton, The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (1995), esp. the chapter on public opinion.

K. M. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (1990), esp. the chapter 'Public Opinion as Political Invention')

W. Sewell, Rhetoric of a Bourgeois Revolution: The Abbé Sieyès and What is the Third Estate? (1994)

H. Chisick, 'Public Opinion and Political Culture in France During the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century', English Historical Review 470 (2002), 48-77.

C. Walton, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution (2009), esp. ch 2 'The culture of calumny and honour'.

J. Censer & L. Hunt, Exploring the French Revolution, ch. 1

C. Jones, The Great Nation, ch. 8.

P.R. Campbell, The Origins of the French Revolution (2006)

Gary Kates, The French Revolution. Recent debates and new controversies (Routledge, 1998), especially Colin Jones, ‘Bourgeois revolution revivified: 1789 and social change’ (pp. 87-112), Sarah Maza, ‘Luxury, morality, and social change: why there was no middle-class consciouness in prerevolutionary France’ (pp. 113-130)

William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Stone, B., The Genesis of the French Revolution. A Global-historical Interpretation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994).

T. Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary. The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789-1790) (Princeton, 1996).

Emmet Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution (1989)

Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment (1998)

George Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton, 1947).

 

Travelling cultures

J. Black, The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (1992)

J. Black, France and the Grand Tour (2003)

J. Lough, France on the Eve of Revolution: British Travellers Abroad, 1763-88 (1988)

J. Black, Natural and Necessary EnemiesL Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (1986)

L. Andries, ‘Paris et l’imaginaire de la ville dans les almanachs français du XVIIIe siècle’, in T.D. Hemming et al., The Secular City (1994)

G. Chabaud, ‘Images de la ville et pratiques du livre: le genre des guides de Paris (XVIIe-XVIIIe)’, RHMC, 45 (1998)

M. Allen (ed.), An English Lady in Paris: The Diary of Frances Anne Crewe (1786) (2006)

B. Dolan, Ladies of the Grand Tour (2001)

D. Roche (ed.), La Ville promise: mobilité et accueil à Paris (fin XVIIe-début XIXe siècle (2000)

D. Roche, Humeurs vagabondes: de la circulation des hommes et de l’utilié des voyages (2003)

J. Grieder, Anglomania in France, 1740-89 (1985)

F. Acomb, Anglophobia in France, 1763-89 (1950)

R. Eagles, Francophilia in English Society, 1748–1815 (2000).

 

Additional primary sources:

Sample of Cahiers de Doleances (1789)

J.L. Ménétra, Journal of My Life (1986)

L.S. Mercier, The picture of Paris (1929), New Pictures of Paris (1800), The New Paris (1962)

A. Young, Travels in France in 1787, 1788 and 1789-1790 (1792).