A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

by Emmet Kennedy ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 1989

Here, Kenndy (History/George Washington Univ.) has come up with a unique perspective on the French Revolution, focusing on its cultural ramifications. While other authors in this bicentennial year (Schama, Citizens, p. 195; etc.) have concentrated on dramatic clashes between the mob and the monarchy, Kennedy is more concerned with the more glacial pace of cultural change in all its guises--painting, music, fiction, science, education, religion, and architecture (but not poetry: ""The Eighteenth century, a prosaic age, was bereft of good poetry""). Above all, Kennedy documents the many symbolic changes that dramatized the destruction of the monarchy and the rise of the citizen: for example, the removal of the heads from statues of the kings of Juda at the portal of Saint Anne, Notre Dame, in 1793, or the scene in Marechal's play Judgement dernier des rois in which a volcanic eruption on stage blows up the sovereigns of Europe. Kennedy chronicles a dual attack on church and monarchy: thus, buildings whose names carried monarchical allusions were renamed (the Academie royale de musique, for example, became today's L'Opera), while school curricula were secularized and libraries purged of ""fanaticism."" The author argues that the Revolution stood for ""a religion of man""--and had two phases: ""the moments of destruction correspond to the agitational phase. . .those of reorganization to the integrative phase. . ."" Very little escapes Kennedy's microscope as he glides effortlessly through the architecture of Paris (which changed little during the Revolution) to the corporations, guilds, Masonic lodges, and literary salons to the view from the countryside (where ""peasants who returned to their huts after military service slipped back naturally. . .into old routines""). Kennedy concludes that the culture that remained in the wake of the Revolution was ""immeasurably richer, more efficient, more variegated, if more confused. . ."" A sound history, supported also by many illustrations (unseen).

Pub Date: June 14, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Yale Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION