Le roi contre la reine: une crise de morale cornélienne, par Fritz Louis

Écrit par J.J. Regnault-Warin et publié entre 1800 et 1801, Le Cimetière de la Madeleine est un long récit fictif mettant en relief les événements tragiques de la fin du règne de Louis XVI. Les principaux protagonistes du roman, Louis XVI et son épouse Marie-Antoinette, faces à la menace de la mort, dévoilent le fond de leur âme. Soumis à la morale chrétienne, Louis XVI se laisse conduire au supplice de la guillotine comme l’agneau que l’on mène à l’abattoir.Gagnée à la cause de la morale aristocratique “paienne” du Moyen-Age, Marie-Antoinette, vu l’affront fait à sa famille, tel un héros cornélien, fait de la vengeance le motif suprême de son existence. Tout en partageant un même destin, Louis XVI et Marie-Antoinette s’érigent en symboles vivants de l’affrontement entre deux écoles de morale:celle chrétienne et celle aristocratique. A travers Marie-Antoinette, c’est le théâtre tragique du 17ème siècle, en particulier celui de Corneille, qui trouve ses résonances.

by Fritz Louis, C.S.C., M.A. University of Notre Dame 2009

Pity and its adversaries

Villette, “Something to Reflect Upon for the Crowned Jugglers,” 1793.

Is emotion political?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined pity as a profoundly human emotion.

Why did revolutionary thought associate pity with weakness, manipulation, and deceit?

I am currently preparing a lecture,  « La Pitié et ses adversaires :  La politique de l’émotion dans les écrits révolutionnaires» to be presented at « Emotions et puissance de la littérature » conference at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, Paris, June 12, 2009.

The lecture builds upon my research on the pamphlets, fictions, and correspondence on the King’s demise following his ill-fated attempt to flee the country in 1791, and considers these materials in the light of the history of “emotives” outlined in William Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling (Cambridge UP, 2001) and “Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions,” Current Anthropology 38 (June 1977).

The fall of Louis XVI is an excellent case to test Reddy’s claims that 1) sincerity is culturally managed; and that 2) “emotional control is the real site of the exercise of power” (NF, 111; “AC,” 335).  My study explores how authors described and criticized who could be a rightful recipient of pity at three key moments in the political history of the French Revolution:  1791, 1800-01, and 1803.  Not only was the king’s  sincerity and legitimacy radically challenged after he was arrested in June 1791 at Varennes, he also lost the right to people’s pity.  Most intriguing from a literary perpective is the contrast  between Regnault-Warin’s novel, Le Cimetière de la Madeleine, and the king’s correspondence (1803, ed. Helen-Maria Williams).  Whereas the former presents an explicitly sympathetic reaction to the king’s fate, mirroring through a number of mise en abyme techniques the desired reader’s response, the latter repeatedly challenges the king’s claims of sincerity and efforts to elicit pity with an ironic series of editorial ”commentaries.” 

Death of Louis XVI, King of France

In updating this message tonight, after posting the ”Weird Liaisons” article earlier today, I was struck by my own insensitivity to the man known as Louis XVI.  Surely the decapitated head above is just as offensive as the Dolce & Gabbana imagery of bloody victims?   How quick we are to dismiss a person–because of his or her status, creed, or color–as unfitting of basic human pity and kindness.  I have thus posted this sympathetic English icon of Louis’s execution to render homage to another facet of his memory.  Tyrant or timid, dull or deliberate, Louis XVI was no monster, and his memory deserves a more dignified tribute than Villette’s grotesquerie.

The original “Revolution in Fiction” class

Seated from left to right: Ms. Laura Fuderer (Hesburgh Library), Kate Crecelius, Marie Sanquer, Rachel Michels, Mark Hug, Stephanie Karle, Valerie Gadala-Maria. Standing from left to right: Sara Bramsen, Fr. Fritz Louis (CSC), Prof. Julia Douthwaite, Sonja Stojanovic, Rachel Santay, Cathy Davis, Allison Lang, Danny Rosas-Alvarez.

In this class we studied revolutionary history and art as context to literature such as Le Cimetière de la Madeleine  (1800-01), Chantal Thomas, Les Adieux à la reine (2002), and rare texts from 1789-1830.