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Douthwaite, Julia V. The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France. Chicago: UP of Chicago, 2012. ISBN 978-0-226-16058-0. Pp. 336. $45. This ambitious study treats four aspects of French Revolutionary culture that for generations have tantalized thinkers and interpreters of the past: the women’s march on Versailles; the shame and pathos of the last months of Louis XVI’s life; the enigma of Robespierre-the-criminal’s rise and fall; the place of technological advances in the Revolution’s attempts to make a ‘new man’ and a new nation. In the course of this fascinating look back through many layers of time, Julia Douthwaite makes a number of discoveries, the most startling of which—François-Félix Nogaret’s 1790 novel about an automaton named Frankenstein—provides the eye-catching first part of her book’s title. Through extensive research, Douthwaite brings to light a large number of longneglected Revolutionary works, from reportage of events by journalists and graphic artists recording what was happening around them to French novels penned shortly after these tumultuous events. To these she appends‘codas’ where fictions modulated by the filtering effects of time and geographical distance—by such authors as Mary Shelley, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and L. Frank Baum—reimagine Revolutionary motifs. This interweaving of print media, immediate reporting, and later intellectual trends makes this impressive account of telling and retelling an original one. Douthwaite’s mastery of interdisciplinary methodologies undergirds her exploration of the Revolution’s legacies.Adopting an approach she aptly terms “new” positivism (4), she establishes epistemological frameworks emphasizing period terminology, social expectations, vernaculars, and chronology for her unique brand of literary criticism. Her accentuation of political-event writing as a form of storytelling distinguishes The Frankenstein of 1790 from standard historiography ; her concentration on only those socio-political materials that had a substantial afterlife influences the tenor of the literary insights she offers. What draws her to these diverse genres is how they treat issues of gender, technology, representation , and justice. What also interests her is how these means of expression refashion history, innovate stylistically, or invent hybrid forms of documentation. Throughout, she reflects on how the corpus she has selected links the Ancien Régime to modernity and fills gaps in our present readings of both history and literature. Archival work is the heart of this exposition of concept formation. After reading archives of notable breadth and depth, Douthwaite organizes her findings so as to allow readers to trace a path of discovery similar to hers.As she presents archival materials, she summarizes, translates, then comments them; she guides her readers to seeing what was previously unseen. The fruitfulness of this method is borne out by the concluding chapter of her study which demonstrates—with deft humor as well as political seriousness—that the contradictions and potential inherent in the revolutionary spirit are with us still. Smith College (MA) Mary Ellen Birkett 222 FRENCH REVIEW 88.1 ...

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