Littérature et engagement pendant la Révolution française: Essai polyphonique et iconographique (review)

In November 1792 Olympe de Gouges confronted Robespierre, addressing him by means of a poster, ‘Dis-moi Maximilien, pourquoi redoutes-tu si fort, à la Convention, les hommes de lettres? Pourquoi t’a-t-on vu tonner à l’assemblée contre les philosophes à qui nous devons la destruction des tyrans?’ (p. 155). As this volume demonstrates, such a direct intervention is just one form of literary engagement, and the editors’ preface usefully charts ways in which less evident forms of engagement may be recognized according to contemporary rather than Sartrean criteria. Drawing on literary studies, the history of science and critical theory, the volume’s eight articles explore the processes of engagement, contestation and negotiation with reference to such figures as André Chénier, Lavoisier and Germaine de Staël. The volume is not quite as interdisciplinary as its subtitle suggests, for while the reader might anticipate a sustained analysis of Revolutionary iconography, the numerous eighteenth-century images are subjected to no such treatment. As the nexus of festivities, pedagogy and politics, the theatre occupied a place of singular importance during the Revolution, and so it is unsurprising to see three articles treat the culture of the playhouse and the dramatic works performed there; a particularly interesting thread between these articles is the observation that works with no overt political slant could be taken up by various audiences and made to signify in unexpectedly political ways. The tensions and conflicts between the models of a theatre by the people and a theatre for the people are examined in well-documented contributions by Serge Bianchi (writing on the theatrical productions of 1793–1794) and Martial Poirson (in a fine analysis of François de Neufchâteau’s Paméla). The legalisation of divorce in September 1792 prompted a host of plays on the subject; while some critics have argued that the topic is politically neutral, Philippe Corno’s contribution (which might have benefited from a greater attention to Beau-marchais’s La Mère coupable) shows that spectators saw in it a crystallization of ideological debates about social scission and harmony. Certainly the period saw examples of militant literary engagement, for as François-Félix Nogaret wrote: ‘Tu ne peux porter ni le sabre ni le mosquet; écris ou parle’ (p. 130). Yet as contrary to such representations of contemporary events, depictions of utopian communities allowed writers to engage creatively with the present political reality, as Anne-Rozen Morel describes with reference to Beffroy de Reigny. Convincing articles by Joël Castonguay-Bélanger and Julia V. Douthwaite treat the figures of the scientist and the savant, respectively, and analyse their active and passive disengagement from the public and political sphere. The volume closes with Huguette Krief’s account of women writers’ marginalization from political engagement, and Yves Citton’s theoretically astute contribution on André Chénier’s ‘intervention dégagée’, effected not through political persuasion but emotional conviction. This collection of shrewd and perceptive essays is a welcome addition, and will be of interest to scholars and students alike of the period’s literary and political history.