A Bastille Day quiz

1. Who said, “Revolutions have terrible arms and righteous fists; they choose their targets well and rarely miss”?
a. Maximilien Robespierre
b. Georges Jacques Danton
c. Olympe de Gouges
d. Victor Hugo

2. Which deputy at the Convention government spoke out against the vague definition of plotter (conspirateur) in the midst of the Terror, and pleaded for measures that would protect the innocent?
a. Robespierre
b. Bishop Talleyrand
c. Marat
d. Danton

3. What author was guillotined in November 1793 on the grounds that her writings aimed to re-establish a counter-revolutionary regime?
a. Charlotte Corday, assassin of Jean-Paul Marat
b. Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Aubin, Countess de Genlis
c. La Princesse de Lamballe, former intimate of Marie-Antoinette
d. Olympe de Gouges, author of La Déclaration des droits de la femme

4. The official celebration of July 14 as the French national holiday dates from what era?
a. 1789
b. 1880
c. 1804
d. 1946

5. What author penned a 1791 document that explained the reasoning behind the actions of King Louis XVI on those days when military intervention could have reversed the course of events (such as July 14, 1789 or October 5-6, 1789), and stressed the king’s sacrifices towards the misguided people (la multitude égarée)?
a. Monsieur, Count de Provence (brother of King Louis XVI)
b. General Lafayette, leader of the National Guard
c. Jean Sylvain Bailly, mayor of Paris
d. King Louis XVI

6. Which public figure described himself as a martyr to the French people?
a. Robespierre
b. Marat
c. King Louis XVI
d. All of the above

7. Which revolutionary event is today considered the turning-point in the fate of the French monarchy?
a. July 14, 1789: the taking of the Bastille
b. October 5-6, 1789: the Women’s March on Versailles
c. January 21, 1793: the execution of Louis XVI
d. October 17, 1793: the execution of Marie-Antoinette

8. Which author penned these prescient words about the Revolution’s legacy: “Thus the truth of history, on this point as among others, will probably not lie in what happened, but only in what continues to be told”?
a. Robespierre
b. Hugo
c. Napoléon
d. Chateaubriand

9. What pop idol is currently the star of a music video that relays the history of the French revolution on YouTube ?
a. Lady Gaga
b. Madonna
c. Beyoncé
d. Taylor Swift

10. What is the most important legacy for France of the Revolution today?
a. The system of representative government
b. The commitment to universal rights
c. Free public education
d. All of the above

Answers
1. d. Victor Hugo, “Les révolutions ont le bras terrible et la main heureuse; elles frappent ferme et choisissent bien,” Les Misérables, ed. Rosa, 2 :1125.
2. a. “Il est important de bien définir ce que vous entendez par conspirateurs; autrement les meilleurs citoyens risqueroient d’être victimes d’un tribunal institué pour les protéger contre les entreprises des contre-révolutionnaires,” Maximilien Robespierre, speech at the Convention on March 11, 1793.
3. d. Olympe de Gouges, condemned and executed for being: “Femme de lettres, âgée de 38 ans, native de Montauban, convaincue d’être l’auteur d’écrits tendans à l’établissement d’un pouvoir attentatoire à la souveraineté du people” (Journal de Paris National, 3 novembre 1793).
4. b. 1880.
5. d. King Louis XVI, in Déclaration du Roi adressée à tous les Français à sa sortie de Paris, a 16-page manuscript left behind in the Tuileries castle on June 20, 1791, when the royal family tried to flee from France.
6. d. All of the above
7. b. The Women’s March (or October Days) is today considered the most important event for symbolic, material, and political reasons, as it revealed the people’s power over the monarch and re-placed the royal family in the capital city. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette never saw Versailles again.
8. c. Napoléon Bonaparte
9. a. Lady Gaga (aka “The History Teachers”)
10. d. Vive la démocratie!

Christmas gift for the revolutionary on your list

“Guillotine” is a card game set during the French Revolution. Slogan: “Le jeu de cartes révolutionnaire qui vous fera perdre la tête.” Your goal? Collect as many noble heads as possible to score enough to win. The game consists of three rounds, with each round consisting of twelve “hours” (collecting a head takes one hour). You will execute the noble first in line. But luckily, there are certain cards that allow you to change the line-up of the condemned, and so enable you to get a better head, or make your opponents get a worse one. Of course, there are certain heads that aren’t very good to “collect”. “Collecting” the martyr isn’t very smart, for example.

The game is rather quick, and very easy to learn. There are not many rules, and the few rules that exist are consistent and very basic.

Strength: Simple, quick, and fun.
Weakness: Can be hard to find a place to buy it. Card iconography bears little to no resemblance to historical figures, but rather a Disney-esque rendition wherein everyone is young and beautiful. Also deforms revolutionary history, of course, but that is a different matter.
My kids and I found it relatively amusing. And they do remember that 1793 is an important date…
Would probably be more fun in a classroom situation, as a reward to students after learning about the Revolution (and prompt them to point out its deformation of history).
Happy Holidays!

Juicy Couture does Marie-Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette mania strikes again, in a recent ad for Juicy Couture fashion and fragrance. What on earth could this image really mean? The teeny bopper with the pink Antoinettesque hairdo and avian companion seem an unlikely combination… unless one recalls the popularity of such portraits in eighteenth-century high society, and the delightfully wicked connotations associated with the death of a girl’s pet bird (as seen here in Greuze’s famous “Jeune fille qui pleure son oiseau mort”). Whereas the innocence of the Old Regime flew the coop long ago, it is amusing to see how the advertising world in the USA keeps the memory alive, and how the tale of the naughty queen and her coterie is ever reinvented in the hopes of selling luxury to a society of plebs.

Reflections on women of the Revolution, by Julie Congdon

This comment just in, from TAS participant Julie Congdon, who contributed an arresting poster featuring famous women of the French Revolution and some of their most memorable words. She writes, “Since many women played an instrumental role behind the scenes (and a few at the forefront) of the American Revolution, I wanted to research the women who were key figures prior to and during the French Revolution. What would be the repercussions of the choices they made? With the massive bloodshed and executions that were taking place at the time, who was brave enough to stand for their beliefs? Many of the women depicted in the poster paid the ultimate price for the decisions they made, thus the placement of the guillotine by their picture.”
by Julie Congdon, Technology Lab Facilitator, LaSalle Intermediate Academy, South Bend, IN

Louis XVI, the pitiful king

All but forgotten today, Van Dyke’s 1938 film “Marie-Antoinette” starring Norma Shearer and Robert Morley bears a second look for those students of the French Revolution who seek another perspective on Louis XVI, one closer to the image favored by his contemporaries. The clip featured here, showing the first encounter of Louis (then Dauphin) and the archduchess Marie-Antoinette, includes many of the themes that would dominate early 19th-century accounts of the king’s demise. In these few minutes, one already espies those elements which would cause his undoing: the scandalous intrigues involving his brother le Comte d’Artois and especially the conspiracies launched by his duplicitous cousin (and would-be heir to the throne), le Duc d’Orléans. Louis comes across here much as he does in period fiction, such as Mme Guénard, Irma (1799-1800); Regnault-Warin, Le Cimetière de la Madeleine (1800-01); and Roussel, Le Château des Tuileries (1802): he is a bashful, awkward presence in public, and painfully aware of that shortcoming. What saves him in this film, as in the novels noted above, is his role as tender-hearted father to his children-people, and his decency towards the voluble queen. We are not claiming that this film is closer to reality than other modern remakes by Sofia Coppola or Ettore Scola, merely that Van Dyke’s sympathetic portrayal of Louis XVI echoes with greater accuracy some of the most widely-read French fictions of the late 1790s-early 1800s.
P.S. Did we mention that Louis’s speech is an absolute howler? Robert Morley was never more hilarious, or more perfectly cast, than in this succulent role of the pitiful king.

A question of rights, by Cynthia MacWhorter

Cynthia MacWhorter participated in the 2009 Teachers as Scholars program on “The French Revolution: A Cultural Approach” (10/6 & 10/13/09). The creative project she contributed is a painting in grisaille of Marie-Antoinette juxtaposed, over whirling cloud-like brush strokes, against images of Robespierre, the halls of Versailles, the National Assembly, and the guillotine. The text on the painting reads: “October 16, 1793: What was her crime, really? Born, wrong place, wrong time? Totally clueless? Married a guy equally clueless? Not French?”
This commentary accompanies the painting: “Due to the fact that the revolution was all about human rights, I felt I wanted to address the lack of rights granted to the many persons who lost their lives due to who they were by birth. Obviously they were not totally innocent of ignorance, respect for the plight of thousands of deprived individuals and a lack of understanding which they probably could have remedied, but as I am opposed to captital punishment for even the worst criminals in contemporary society, I wanted to draw (with paint) attention to the young Queen and her plight.”
Cynthia MacWhorter, Art teacher, St. Joseph High School, South Bend, IN

Marie-Antoinette the Cake-eater, in perpetuity

Poor Marie-Antoinette. Will those wretched words never go away? Apparently not, if our popular culture is any indication. Check out the now famous, deliciously indulgent clip from Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, and the New York Times Crossword puzzle of 7/14/09.

Nourishing the revolutionary spirit

A paradox confronts the scholar of revolutionary literature.  One is initially drawn to this material because of its immense energy, optimism for democratic principles, and verifiable, powerful engagement in politics.  Also attractive are the voices of rarely heard members of society: the poissarde (fish-seller of les Halles) and the peasant, policemen and prostitutes.  And yet, over time, one realizes that most of the best texts published in 1789-1804, judged in terms of literary quality–style, characterization, imagery, plot–argue against the principles of 1789 and are in fact counter-revolutionary.  A new project seeks to gather some of these texts–from both sides of the political divide–to make them available for teaching in a bilingual edition with critical background and notes. 

So far, the texts under consideration include:  Le Falot du peuple (a lively dialogue on the king’s trial, as seen by two poissardes and a public writer), J’attends (a sensationally horrid little account of the guillotine waiting for the Queen), short stories by Condorcet, Sade, and possibly the whole text of Pauliska, which is arguably the best novel of the post-revolutionary period. 

Pauliska never fails to appeal with its bizarre plots of secret societies, vampirish scientific practices, and incredible gender bending.  But it also imparts a poignant sense of emigration, exile, and trauma.

Stay tuned for more on this project, launched by Julia Douthwaite and Catriona Seth, Université de Nancy, and feel free to send us your ideas too!

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.