Re-Imagining the French Eighteenth Century: New Approaches in Scholarship and Innovative Tools for the Classroom

Jack R. Censer and Lynn Hunt. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001). Pp. xiii + 213. $19.95 paper.

Julie Candler Hayes. Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Pp. x + 243. £45.00 cloth.

Looking at the familiar in new ways is what both texts under review here propose to do. While Censer and Hunt explore the French Revolution, Hayes questions the all-inclusive term, the French Enlightenment. The authors of these books attempt to locate subversive and non-canonical moments in the historical and literary discourse of a period, which all too often has been discussed from monolithic perspectives. While the two books share the aim of expanding readers' understanding of the period in question, they address different audiences. Censer and Hunt's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution is geared towards students and teachers of the French eighteenth century, whereas Hayes' Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion addresses a more specialized audience of literary and cultural critics of the period. In reviewing the above books, I shall describe each text in detail in order to illustrate how they both rewrite and compel readers to rethink the master narratives of the French eighteenth century.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is a superb introduction to and presentation of the French Revolution; it is extremely user-friendly and appealing. It consists of six chapters, ranging from the revolutionary beginnings, to the Napoleonic period. Each chapter explains the basic historical events in concise terms, without however leading to an oversimplification of French history. As the authors acknowledge, "[f]our of its six chapters take up the customary narrative of the Revolution" (xi), while the other two—Chapters Four and Six—provide the reader with a more unusual look at the post-1789 period. Chapter Four consists of an account of the effects of the Revolution on France's Caribbean colonies and thereby introduces race, a category frequently neglected in this context, into the historical picture. The focus on race in this chapter parallels Censer and Hunt's interest in the role that other frequently overlooked groups played in the French Revolution, such as religious minorities or women. While Chapter Four strives to paint a more complete picture of the past, Chapter Six establishes a link to the present by providing an overview of the legacies and interpretations of the French Revolution. By tracing back some twentieth-century political positions to this period, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity effectively demonstrates the French Revolution's importance to contemporary political debates and developments. While it is successful as a historical overview, Censer and Hunt's text can also be used as a rich source book because it contains a variety of pertinent documents, some of which have been translated into English for the first time. As such, the documents as well as the illustrations (paintings, engravings and maps) provide a wealth of material for exploring both the well known and the less familiar manifestations of the Revolution in France and abroad.

In addition to the book, the companion CD-ROM, prepared with the support of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and of the American Social History Project at City University of New York, provides the reader with yet more material on the topic. It contains ten chapters, five multimedia overviews (narrated by the authors), more than 300 images ("the widest collection prepared for English-speaking readers"), more than 300 textual documents, 13 revolutionary song recordings and 13 maps. A partial overlap exists between book and CD-ROM; while they can be consulted independently of each other, the greatest benefit can be drawn by using them as companions. On the CD-ROM, two chapters are particularly appealing, one on the songs of the Revolution and the other on how to...