A Revolution of Emotions

Core primary reading

E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, passage about Marie-Antoinette.

J. Ménétra, Journal of My Life, passages about the French Revolution, pp. 217-238 [copies in library - library use only].

Core secondary reading

L. Hunt, 'Torrents of Emotion' in Inventing Human Rights (2007), pp. 35-69.

T. Tackett, ‘Conspiracy Obsession in a Time of Revolution: French Elites and the Origins of the Terror, 1789-1792’, American Historical Review 105: 3 (2000), 691-713.

Suggested reading

S. Wahnich, In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution (orig. 2003; English 2012), intro and ch 1, pp. 1-35.

For a critique and an unpacking of some of Wahnich’s theoretical building blocks, see my review of the French edition in H-France.

D. Dwan, 'Edmund Burke and the Emotions', Journal of the History of Ideas 72: 4 (2011), 571-593.

S. Clay, ‘Vengeance, justice and the reactions in the Revolutionary Midi’, French History 23: 1 (2009), 22-46

C. Hesse, ‘Reading IN EXTREMIS: revolutionaries respond to Rousseau’, in C. Walton (ed.), Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment (2011), 145-157.

L. Hunt, The Family Romance in the French Revolution (1993)

A. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (2000), see especially the chapter on vengeance.

P. McPhee, Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life (2012)

M. Linton, Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution (2013)

B. Shapiro, Traumatic Politics: The Deputies and the King in the Early French Revolution (2009)

W. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotion (2001)

W. Reddy, ‘Sentimentalism and Its Erasure: The Role of Emotions in the Era of the French Revolution’, Journal of Modern History 72: 1 (2000).

S. Reynolds, Marriage and Revolution: Monsieur et Madame Roland (2012)

E. Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment (2001).

C. Walton, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (2009), ch. 7 on honour, vengeance and the high crime of lèse-nation.

C. Walton, 'Between Trust and Terror: Patriotic Giving in the French Revolution', in David Andress (ed.), Experiencing the French Revolution (Voltaire Foundation: 2013), pp. 47-68.