THUNDERSTORMS. LITERATURE AND CULTURE (1760-1830)
N ° 19 – POPULAR EXPLOSIONS
December 2020
Issue edited by Sophie Marchand and Olivier Ritz
“This great volcano could have slept for a long time, it caught fire, it died out, it re-ignited. the writers wanted the lava to flow on one side rather than the other; these lavas took the journalist and his pen. “
These words of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, taken from the chapter of New Paris entitled “Explosion”, summarize the questions that feed this issue ofThunderstorms. the articles gathered here focus on the methods chosen to represent the popular explosions of the period 1760-1830 and on the emergence of forms suitable to embody and carry them. They are also interested in the judgments and axiology that accompany these phenomena. Literature, the arts, thought are also modified: the explosion concerns forms and audiences regenerated by historical upheavals.
The specificity of this issue is not to be confined to the point of view of contemporaries of events. These popular explosions that the arts and discourses fix on the moment shape grids of intelligibility of history which themselves have a history. It is also these uses of the representations of the people, of their emotions, of their access to representation that we wish to question, from the theater of the reign of Louis XVI to contemporary representations of the Revolution.
The dossier brings together contributions from Sophie Wahnich, Thibaut Julian, Jacob Lachat and Shelly Charles, as well as the report of a round table with Florent Grouazel and Younn Locard, authors of the comic strip Revolution, crowned with the Fauve d’Or at the Angoulême Festival 2020. the “Texts” section presents an excerpt from theApology for the French Revolution by James Mackintosh (1792) presented by Olivier Ritz, as well as the outcomes of Masaniello de Carafa (1827) et de La Muette de Portici d’Aber (1828) introduced by Olivier Bara.
An exclusive interview with Éric Vuillard, author of July 14th (2016) and The war of the poor (2019), published by Actes Sud, completes this dossier.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial, by Olivier Bara
DOSSIER
Introduction, by Sophie Marchand and Olivier Ritz
Sophie Wahnich, “Explosive storms: metaphors and revolutionary actions, 1788-1795”
Thibaut Julian, “Of peoples and kings. Theatrical revolts under the reign of Louis XVI »
Jacob Lachat, “Distance violence: Chateaubriand and the history of popular explosions”
Shelly Charles, “The“ people of readers ”and the explosion of the romantic genre”
Florent Grouazel and Younn Locard: ““ We blew up the barrier of Hell ”: drawing the revolutionary explosion”, interview edited by Olivier Ritz and Sophie Marchand
TEXTS
James Mackintosh : « Apology for the French Revolution », Excerpt presented and edited by Olivier Ritz
Olivier Bara, “One volcano can hide another. Popular rashes in Masaniello and La Muette de Portici (1827-1828)
NOTEBOOKTHUNDERSTORMS
Varia
Linda Gil, “The fury of reading Latin poets on the eve of the French Revolution”
“A“ wise freedom ”. Letters from Jean-Nicolas Bouilly to Dominique Clément de Ris, 1794-1825 ”, presented and annotated by François Jacob
Red string
Jean-Noël Pascal, “Lyrical violence in the time of the Revolution (1788-1793)”
Interview
Interview with Éric Vuillard: “A breach that does not really close”
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