/lit/ - Literature

Omg anon, are you really going to read about the French Revolution?? You must be so smart if you feel ready to tackle something like that. And dedicated. I mean, it was like 200 yrs ago. Yup,you're definitely not a worthless piece of shit.

Happy?

I would recommend A Concise History of the French Revolution by Sylvia Neely. Despite the fact that some people deride it as "royalist" because it doesn't paint Louis XVI as an asshole (which he wasn't) I feel it's a great starting point that will give you background information necessary to read more niche works about the revolution.

>>4363556
>dat autism

>>4363556
Don't cut yourself on that edge

>>4363556

>>4363556

>>4363614
>>4363578
>>4363571
>>4363560

I first read Christopher Hibbert's book; it was horrendously biased, but it did help inform me of the basics. Most of what else I've learned about the French Revolution I've gotten from individual biographies (like Peter McPhee's "Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life" and Philip Dwyer's Napoleon biographies).

I would really like to read "Vive La Revolution!" at some point.

Lefebvre's "The Coming of the French Revolution", and "The French Revolution" as too are Rude's "Revolutionary Europe", Talmon's "The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy" and Schama's "Citizens" would be a good starting point for you.

A good bit of fiction is A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel, which is a doorstopper and follows the lives of Robespierre, Danton and Desmoulins. It's fiction, but apparently most of the conversations (as well as the events, obviously) are based on fact and actual written testimonies.

Stay away from Carlyle's History, because he just rambles about pointless shit and only occasionally takes a break to point out the actual history.

Actually, the first book about the French Revolution I read was Anatole France's "Les Dieux ont Soif." Pro-monarchist and, well, fictional, but it still contributed to my understanding of the wider situation, I think.

>>4363653
Vive la Revolution was an easy read, but it reminds me of an adult Horrible Histories. Fun and entertaining with lots of misinformation thrown in.

>>4363556
>no one is allowed to be interested in history because they're interested in it
>someone asking for book recommendations on a book board is fishing for compliments

>>4363766
What sort of misinformation?

I suppose I'm anxious to read "Vive la Revolution!" because I'd like to read a contemporary history of the French Revolution that doesn't take an unnecessarily bleak view, something I haven't yet managed to find.

>>4363782
A lot of little things, like mixing up people/places/dates. It's not bleak, that's for sure, so it probably has the tone you're looking for.

>>4363818
Christopher Hibbert's book is like... "Here, have 29 pages of lurid description of peasants breaking into people's houses and dismembering them. Whoops, I forgot to mention the abolition of slavery or any of that stuff; oh well."

>>4363839
A lot of modern authors seem to get caught up in the violence of the revolution instead of the political and social changes. Part of me can't blame them (people are often tempted by the morbid/violent) but it is frustrating. It seems like modern scholarship is divided in between extreme niche topics, constant social biographies about Marie Antoinette, and "general histories" with an emphasis on "look at all the violence!"

>>4363654
>Stay away from Carlyle's History, because he just rambles about pointless shit and only occasionally takes a break to point out the actual history.

see i've been itching to read carlyle's history, partially for that reason. is it really that bad?

Tocqueville's Ancien Regime. Condorcet, Diderot.

>>4363495

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azKNngXBICs

>>4363495
Robert Palmer's Twelve Who Ruled is pretty good if you're interested in the terror.

Burke

>>4364536
What a stuttering buffoon.

>>4364547
For serious study? Nah. pic related. Unless you're interested in the historiography of the revolution.

>>4364560
Ha ha ha, oh lord. Is that Robespierre? I love the little blush they've put on his cheeks; it really captures that sort of... quasi-childlike quality he seems to have possessed.

>>4364744
No, it's Burke worshiping Marie Antoinette.

>It is now 16 or 17 years since I saw the Queen of France… at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision… little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and cavaliers. I thought 10,000 swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished foreve

>>4364748
Oh, god damn it. I'd thought maybe it was Robespierre being all, "OMG LADY VIRTUE, I'M YOUR BIGGEST FAN." I feel crestfallen.

I have no idea what Edmund Burke looks like.

>>4364748
though you have to admit the man was good with prose and rhetoric

>>4364748
I got a false ID off the little glasses.

Any recommendations for French-language books on the Revolution?

>>4364748
And then you have the anti-MA propaganda which is the opposite

>Antoinette goes into her apartments, where the above-mentioned persons are. She finds them stark naked, their pistols erect and ready to draw. Carried away with joy, the Queen would like to take her clothes off too. But two knots check her sudden desire to reveal the seat of her virginity, which she lost three years before her marriage; she cuts them with scissors to have done with them the sooner, forgetting that after she’s had her pleasure she’ll need to attach the petticoat with strings. Her feather brain didn’t consider that. She was well and truly caught out, as you will see from the following.

>the awkward moment when this pamphlet implied she lost her virginity at 11

>>4364770
Can't we just agree that Marie Antoinette was more or less boring and move on?

>>4364748
The way your greentext cut off made me smirk. Burke obviously got grabbed by sophisters and economists before he could finish the quote.

>>4364773
>Marie Antoinette was boring
>hundreds of books
>dozens of films
>god knows how many Associations, websites, forums, etc

She was a pivotal figure in ancien regime France and the first 4 years of the revolution. Sorry to break it to you.

>>4364780
She was important and a lot of other people clearly think she was interesting; these aren't things I'm disputing. I've just never gotten the appeal, myself.

>>4364786
>Can't we just agree that Marie Antoinette was more or less boring and move on?
>stop discussing someone I don't want to discuss!

>>4364792
I'm just saying-- we've got Robespierre, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Saint-Just, Mirabeau, Marat the sewer-dwelling weirdo who wore a headcloth soaked in vinegar, Théroigne de Méricourt the sexy mass-murderer, etc., etc. Other options for your consideration.

>>4364780
I've been to Marie Antoinette's garden in Versailles, that place is hella weird

>huge garden, fake farm for Antoinette to "play farmer"
>a bit of livestock to make it look like a fake farm
>servants had to clean livestock to make it look nicer
>fake houses, way to small
>one house just for playing billard
>fake lake
>tiny bridges over the lake
>fake tiny vineyard
>pagodas in Greek style for Greek lovegods

That place is outtatime

Jonathan Israels "Radical Enlightenment" trilogy

>>4364801
And I was talking about Marie Antoinette. And, to boot, I wasn't even responding to you with my comment.

>>4364801
Roux

>>4364802
It was the last in the great "faux hamlets" of the ancien regime!

She never actually played farmer or peasant or shepherdess, though--the hamlet was a way for her to indulge in that Rousseau-like simplicity that he encouraged women to partake in. Aka, drink lots of milk, be a mistress managing a farm, avoid gossip and court society. In other words, be "motherly" by reigning over a farm and not a court. But because she was queen, she (like other aristocrats) basically build a miniature... countryside close enough to society that she could travel back and forth at her leisure.

It's an interesting contradiction, really. Originally there were two dairies: one where her workers would make the products, then another where they would be brought and displayed for the queen and her friends to enjoy. And actually, the original "display dairy" was more or less indistinguishable from the real one, which was what she wanted. But after it was completed, the architect in charge of Versailles decided that it had to be redone because it was not befitting of her station.

Pic related, one of the interiors of (I think) the Queen's House. Dior just played to have a few of the buildings restored, so there's that.

>>4364827
forgot my rec: Dairy Queens: The Politics of Pastoral Architecture by Meredith Martin.

The Secret Side of History

French Revolution was a masonic conspiracy orchestrated from England and the bankers.

François Furet and Michel Vovelle.

>>4364154

I mean, read it if you want, but it's like a version of the French Revolution as if told by John Milton, and if Milton were actually an eyewitness to the events.

>>4363556
What is wrong with you.

Are any of these a definitive narrative history ala gibbons or Churchill

>>4366629
Not saying they are definitive re modern scholarship, more like a classic work that has defined the subject. I know about Carlyle, but fuck that prose

>>4363654
+1 for Schama as a readable starting point

Lord Acton, Burke for Brit. perspectives

>>4363654
>Lefebvre
If you want Marxoidal tinted lenses, I guess

>>4366787

The French revolution is about one of the only pre-20th century periods in which I think Marxists have a point, what with the whole "bourgeois vs. the aristocracy" thing.

>>4366865
Personally, I dislike how the Marxist interpretation of the revolution has simplified it into "the people revolting against the aristocracy," when the initial revolution was not about doing away with the monarchy or even the aristocracy, but allowing the rich bourgeois the same privilege as the rich aristocracy

Yurope The American Invasion has a good section on french culture

>>4367198
>the initial revolution was not about doing away with the monarchy or even the aristocracy, but allowing the rich bourgeois the same privilege as the rich aristocracy
You are describing exactly the Marxist interpretation.

>>4367198

As this guy said:

>>4367239

The Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution is that it was a *bourgeois* revolution, which is especially stressed by the Bolsheviki (Lenin & Co.) in their intensive study of the topic. Their specific interest was the peculiar similarities between the French Revolution and their own struggle against absolutism, and a great deal of Lenin's writing is devoted to an explanation as to why the Russian bourgeoisie could not play the same role (I believe he sometimes described it as 'heroic') as the French.

Off the top of my head, the argument put forward was something to the effect that after the French bourgeois revolution had run its course, the further petty-bourgeois (and peasant)"democratic" surges were suppressed by the now reactionary bourgeois Jacobins. The Proletariat at this point in history is too effete to assert its own agenda with any strength, and the perpetually weak petty-bourgeoisie (shop-keeps, small masters, etc.), and the scattered peasants lacked the force to continue the revolution. The only forces of the day that could possibly attain to power were a restored monarchy backed by the military might of the rest of Europe and Britain *or* the victorious bourgeoisie.

This was contrasted to the Russian situation, that being an effete bourgeoisie incapable of realizing its own revolutionary agenda. The idea of Lenin was that only two classes remained capable of struggle against absolutism; proletariat and peasantry. The peasantry, always and everywhere incapable of self-organization, was to submit to the leadership of the proletariat in struggle for revolution - initially bourgeois, and then socialist in character.

The above is a horrid over-simplification absent the wealth of historical analysis and pertinent statistical data, so please don't take it as an assertion of the argument. It is a mere explanation in brief.

>>4367239
The Marxist interpretation pits them against each other, though, when as a group the bourgeois were not against the aristocracy, at least in 1789 through 1791--they wanted to be part of that class and had, for years, bought titles in order to do so. Class lines in 18th century France were incredibly blurred.

(Which, on a slight tangent, is why I dislike the effect of the Marxist interpretation, because it has spread the idea of "the poor people vs. the rich aristocracy." The lack of a title in 18th century France did not mean that they were poor or underprivileged, being an aristocrat did not mean they were rich or living it up. Shit, the privileges of voting/ownership/etc to men drafted during the revolution were specifically designed to only be given to men who would be today described as upper middle class in wealth. They had no problem using the hungry poor for mobs, but let them vote? Nahhhh.)

Anyway. When the bourgeois bought their way into the aristocracy there were still some privileges reserved solely for those with a more impressive genealogy. Part of the complaints offered up before the Estates General were those which tackled the (relatively few, but still vital, such as the ability to be promoted to certain ranks in the military) privileges only afforded to aristocracy that could trace its lineage back several generations.

That's always been my belief, anyway. Maybe I'm confusing the Marxist interpretation for another classic interpretation?

>>4367288

As I attempted to indicate in my above post, the Marxist interpretation (that I am familiar with) is heavily focused on the breaking point between the bourgeois revolution and its reaction against the democratic elements (petty bourgeoisie, peasants, town workers etc). The point of this (the Marxist analysis) is to understand that the bourgeoisie must, after attaining its own goals, act from the logic of its position and suppress those very elements with which it allied in struggle. Just as the material interests of the bourgeoisie caused them to expropriate the church-lands, church-buildings, and aristocratic lands and properties, they also caused them to defend those interests against democratic rule.

has anyone read this?

>>4363495
For a more personal look at the French Revolution read The Black Count. It follows the life of Alex Dumas the father of Alexander Dumas (who wrote the Three Musketeers among other classics) as he goes from the son of a minor noble and a slave to a General in the French Army during the French Revolution.