Writers and revolution : intellectuals and the French Revolution of 1848 /
This book is a study of nine writers who lived through the French revolution of 1848 and wrote about it. Each produced at least one significant work on the revolution and the republic to which it gave rise. The book has two aims. First, to convey a sense of the experience of 1848 as these writers li...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge ; New York :
Cambridge University Press,
2021.
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | This book is a study of nine writers who lived through the French revolution of 1848 and wrote about it. Each produced at least one significant work on the revolution and the republic to which it gave rise. The book has two aims. First, to convey a sense of the experience of 1848 as these writers lived it. Above all, to recover the sense of possibility felt at a time when it was not yet clear that the Second Republic had no future. Secondly, I look closely at the texts in which each writer attempted to understand, judge, criticize or intervene in the revolution. Some of these texts are famous, Marx's 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Tocqueville's Recollections, Flaubert's Sentimental Education. Others include the formal histories by Lamartine and Marie d'Agoult, Herzen's autobiography, Hugo's speeches, Proudhon's "Confessions" and George Sand's correspondence. They all explore suggestively the failure of the democratic republic in 1848-1852. Most raise the question posed explicitly by Tocqueville. How was it that within the space of two generations democratic revolutions in France had twice culminated in the dictatorship of a Napoleon? |
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| Physical Description: | xix, 474 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781108842532 1108842534 9781108829373 1108829376 |