FR401 The French Revolution 2011-12

 

Week 1: The Ancien Régime

 

Lecture: the ancien régime

Seminar: Historical approaches

 

Week 2: The origins of the Revolution

 

Lecture: 1789

Seminar: The organisation of society

 

Presentation: the Enlightenment and new ideas in ancien régime France

Presentation reading: Chartier, 'Do books make revolutions?' in The French Revolution in social and political perspective, ed. by Peter Jones, chapter 8

 

Set reading for all:

• Doyle, French Revolution: A very short introduction, chapters 1-2

· Cahier de doléance extract (to be handed out in lecture 1)

· Letter from Catherine de Saint-Pierre in Dieppe (to be handed out in lecture 1)

 

Recommended reading:

· Censer/ Hunt chapter 1 (online at http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap1a.html)

 

Topics for discussion:

§ the monarchy in the ancien régime

§ Society in the ancien régime

 

Week 3: Constitutional France

 

Lecture: The National Assembly

Seminar: 1789

 

Presentation: the Déclarations des droits de l'homme: what they represented, their importance, their impact

Presentation reading: Les déclarations des droits de l'homme de 1789 / textes réunis et présentés par Christine Fauré (1988)

 

Set reading for all:

· Doyle, chapter 4

· Mercier, Adieux à l'année 1789

· Déclaration des droits de l’homme

 

Topics for discussion:

· the estates general

· the fall of the Bastille

· the regeneration of France

· the key achievements of 1789

 

Week 4: the fall of the monarchy

 

Lecture: war and the downfall of the monarchy

Seminar: 1791

 

Presentation: the contradictions between the rhetoric of liberté, égalité, fraternité and the reality of the constitution

Presentation reading: ‘Fixing the French constitution’, in Inventing the French Revolution Keith Michael Baker, chapter 11

 

Set reading for all:

• 1791 constitution
• Olympe de Gouges, Déclarations des droits de la femme
• Censer/ Hunt chapter 2

 

Topics for discussion:

• constitutional monarchy
• how was the nation’s collective identity reshaped after 1789?
• compare the Déclarations des droits de l’homme with the droits de la femme

 

 

 

Week 5 :

Lecture: Revolutionary songs

Seminar: representations of the monarchy

 

Presentation: Marie-Antoinette: myth and reality

§ Presentation reading: The Wicked Queen, Thomas, esp. chapter 4

 

Set reading for all:

 

· Pierre Saint-Amand, ‘Terrorizing Marie-Antoinette’, Critical Inquiry, 20.3 (1994) (on JSTOR)

· Censer/Hunt, Chapter 6 (available at http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap6a.html)

 

· Revolutionary pamphlets (on gallica):

o Louis XVI et Antoinette, traités comme ils le méritent (1791)

o Lettre secrette et curieuse de Marie-Antoinette à Bouillé (1792)

o Républicains, guillotinez-moi ce jean-foutre de Louis XVI, et cette putain de Marie-Antoinette, d'ici à quatre jours, si vous voulez avoir du pain... (1793)

 

Topics for discussion:

· the flight to Varennes

· 10 August

· Representations of the King and Queen.

 

· Trace the representation of the monarchy through the images provided in the ‘Symbolic decline’ section of Censer/ Hunt Chapter 6 (22 images in total).

 

· Compare the types of depiction in the visual images with the written pamphlets

 

Week 7: Culture of the Revolution

Lecture: The Terror

Seminar: Revolutionary songs

 

Presentation: the representation of women in songs

Presentation reading: Jones (ed) The French Revolution, section 3, chapters 12-15: gender in the public sphere

Set reading for all:

Chansonnier révolutionnaire, songs 13 (Ah! Ça ira!), 14 (Couplets sur le Ça ira!), 21 (Les Émigrants), 32 (La Marseillaise), 33 (La Carmagnole), 53 (Chanson des sans-culottes), 58 (variant on La Marseillaise), 73 (Hymne à la liberté), 74 (Hymne patriotique relative à l’inauguration du temple de la raison), 92 (Hymne à l’être suprême), 102 (Le Réveil du peuple), 106 (La Contre-Marseillaise), 109 (Le vrai Réveil du peuple)

·Look in particular at the Réveil du peuple

 

Recommended reading:

· Brécy, La Révolution en chantant

· Mason, L., Singing the French Revolution (1996)

· Ozouf, M., La Fête révolutionnaire (1976)

 

Week 8: The Terror

 

Lecture: Hands-on session in the Modern Records Centre: Introduction to the Marandet collection and digitisation project

 

Seminar: Robespierre and saint-just

 

Presentation: persuasion and the social vision in Robespierre and Saint-Just

Presentation reading: Négrel, Eric and J.-P. Sermain, Une Expérience rhétorique: L’Eloquence de la Révolution, SVEC 2002:2

 

Set reading for all:

· Robespierre’s speeches Sur les principes de morale politique and Sur les rapports des idées religieuses et morales avec les principes républicains. Full text versions of a number of Robespierre's speeches are available at http://membres.lycos.fr/discours/discours.htm

· Saint-Just, Rapport sur la nécessité de déclarer le gouvernement révolutionnaire jusqu'à la paix (Oct 1793). Full text versions of Saint Just's speeches are available at http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/ihm/index_archives_discours_stjust.htm

Recommended reading:

· Blum, C., Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: The Language of Politics in the French Revolution (1986)

· Doyle, Oxford History of the French Revolution, chapters 11-13

· ·Haydon, C. and W. Doyle (eds), Robespierre (1999)

· David Jordan, The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre (1989)

 

Week 9: Theatre of the Revolution

 

Lecture: Introduction to Theatre of the Revolution

Seminar: Le Jugement dernier des rois

 

Presentation topic: comedy in Le Jugement dernier des rois

 

Set reading:

· Maréchal, Jugement dernier des rois

· Jean-Marie Apostolides, ‘La Guillotine littéraire’, The French Review 62 (6), 1989, pp. 985-996. Available on JSTOR.

 

Topics for discussion:

· Sans-culotte ideology in the play

· Nature and the sublime

 

Recommended reading:

· Jacques Proust, ‘De Sylvain Maréchal à Maiakovski: contribution à l’étude du théâtre révolutionnaire’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Fiction presented to Robert Niklaus (1975), pp. 215-44.

 

Week 10: Ending the Revolution

 

Lecture: the Directory and the consulate

Seminar: Napoleon and the Revolution’s achievements

 

Pair presentation: How did the Concordat provide stability?

(recommended reading: the text of the Concordat, available at http://www.napoleon.org/fr/salle_lecture/articles/files/Concordat_18011.asp)

Set reading:

 

· Le directoire exécutif aux Français, le 18 fructidor, an V

 

· 1799 Constitution

 

· Extracts from Napoleon’s pronouncements

 

Recommended reading: Jourdan, L’Empire de Napoléon, chap 1

 

Questions:

What was the importance of the coup of fructidor?

 

What were the dangers facing the Republic 1795-99?

 

Did the Directory make any real contribution to the Revolution?

 

Why is it seen as the ‘unheroic’ period of the Revolution? (term used in chapter 7 of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap7e.html, p. 5.

 

How is rhetoric being used in the pronouncements from the Directory and Consulate?