![]() Title page of the first English edition | |
Author | Thomas Carlyle |
---|---|
Country | England |
Language | English |
Subject | The French Revolution |
Published | 1837 |
Publisher | James Fraser |
The French Revolution: A History was written by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. The three-volume work, first published in 1837 (with a revised edition in print by 1857), charts the course of the French Revolution from 1789 to the height of the Reign of Terror (1793–94) and culminates in 1795. A massive undertaking which draws together a wide variety of sources, Carlyle's history—despite the unusual style in which it is written—is considered[by whom?] to be an authoritative account of the early course of the Revolution.
Production
John Stuart Mill, a friend of Carlyle's, found himself caught up in other projects and unable to meet the terms of a contract he had signed with his publisher for a history of the French Revolution. Mill proposed that Carlyle produce the work instead; Mill even sent his friend a library of books and other materials concerning the Revolution, and by 1834 Carlyle was working furiously on the project. When he had completed the first volume, Carlyle sent his only complete manuscript to Mill. While in Mill's care the manuscript was destroyed, according to Mill by a careless household maid who mistook it for trash and used it as a firelighter. Carlyle then rewrote the entire manuscript, achieving what he described as a book that came "direct and flamingly from the heart."[1]
Style
As a historical account, The French Revolution has been both enthusiastically praised and bitterly criticized for its style of writing, which is highly unorthodox within historiography. Where most professional historians attempt to assume a neutral, detached tone of writing, or a semi-official style in the tradition of Thomas Babington Macaulay,[2] Carlyle unfolds his history by often writing in present-tense first-person plural[3] as though he and the reader were observers, indeed almost participants, on the streets of Paris at the fall of the Bastille or the public execution of Louis XVI. This, naturally, involves the reader by simulating the history itself instead of solely recounting historical events.[citation needed]
Carlyle further augments this dramatic effect by employing a style of prose poetry that makes extensive use of personification and metaphor—a style that critics have called exaggerated, excessive, and irritating. Supporters, on the other hand, often label it as ingenious. John D. Rosenberg, a Professor of humanities at Columbia University and a member of the latter camp, has commented that Carlyle writes "as if he were a witness-survivor of the Apocalypse. [...] Much of the power of The French Revolution lies in the shock of its transpositions, the explosive interpenetration of modern fact and ancient myth, of journalism and Scripture."[4] Take, for example, Carlyle's recounting of the death of Robespierre under the axe of the Guillotine:
All eyes are on Robespierre's Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead Brother and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered, their "seventeen hours" of agony about to end. The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which is he. A woman springs on the Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one hand, waving the other Sibyl-like; and exclaims: "The death of thee gladdens my very heart, m'enivre de joi"; Robespierre opened his eyes; "Scélérat, go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers!" -- At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw: the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry; — hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be too quick![5]
Thus, Carlyle invents for himself a style that combines epic poetry with philosophical treatise, exuberant story-telling with scrupulous attention to historical fact. The result is a work of history that is perhaps entirely unique,[6] and one that is still in print nearly 200 years after it was first published. With its (ambivalent) celebration of the coming of democracy, and its warning to the Victorian aristocracy, the work was celebrated by Lord Acton as "the volumes that delivered our fathers from thraldom to Burke".[7]
Reception
The book immediately established Carlyle's reputation as an important 19th-century intellectual. It also served as a major influence on a number of his contemporaries, including Charles Dickens, who compulsively carried the book around with him,[8] and drew on it while producing A Tale of Two Cities for his crowd scenes in particular.[9] Oscar Wilde committed large portions of the book to memory; in his dialogue "The Decay of Lying", one of the speakers commends it, because in "one of the most fascinating historical novels ever written, facts are either kept in their proper subordinate position, or else entirely excluded on the general ground of dulness."[10] Mark Twain studied the book closely during the last year of his life, and it was reported to be the last book he read before his death.[11]
In 1839, the French Revue Britannique identified Carlyle as "the author . . . of a mediocre history of the French Revolution."[12] In his January 1840 review, Giuseppe Mazzini argued that Carlyle misunderstood the Revolution because he lacked the "true conception of Humanity," not recognising "any collective life or collective aim. He recognises only individuals."[13] A French translation of the history appeared between 1865 and 1867, eliciting positive notices from Barbey d'Aurevilly, who preferred him to Jules Michelet, and from Léon Bloy, who decried the total neglect of Carlyle's history by his compatriots.[14] Michelet, who saw the Revolution as creative rather than destructive as Carlyle did,[15] criticized the latter's history in 1868 as a "wretched work," "devoid of study" and "full of false flights,"[16] elsewhere remarking that "it is the work of an artist, but not a work of art."[17]
See also
Notes
- ^ Eliot, Charles William (ed., 1909–14). "Introductory Note." In: The Harvard Classics, Vol. XXV, Part 3. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, p. 318.
- ^ J Burrow, A History of Histories (Penguin 2009), p. 384–5
- ^ J Burrow, A History of Histories (Penguin 2009), p. 382 and 393
- ^ Carlyle, Thomas (2002). The French Revolution: A History. New York: The Modern Library, p. xviii.
- ^ Carlyle (2002), pp. 743–744.
- ^ A Cobban, A History of Modern France 1 (Penguin 1961), p. 275
- ^ J Burrow, A History of Histories (Penguin 2009), p. 380
- ^ S Heffer, Moral Desperado (London 1995), p. 173
- ^ J Burrow, A History of Histories (Penguin 2009), p. 384
- ^ Wilde, Oscar. The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Richard Ellmann. New York: Random House, 1968. p. 304.
- ^ Mark Twain is Dead at 74 (The New York Times)
- ^ Roy, G. Ross. “The French Reputation of Thomas Carlyle in the Nineteenth Century.” In Thomas Carlyle 1981: Papers Given at the International Thomas Carlyle Centenary Symposium, ed. Horst W. Drescher, 299. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1983.
- ^ Mazzini, Guiseppe. Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini. 6 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 18911908. 4:118, 141.
- ^ Roy, G. Ross (2004). "Reputation: Thomas Carlyle's Reputation in France". In Cumming, Mark (ed.). The Carlyle Encyclopedia. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp. 394–396. ISBN 978-1611471724.
- ^ Jann, Rosemary (2004). "Michelet, Jules". In Cumming, Mark (ed.). The Carlyle Encyclopedia. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 320. ISBN 978-1611471724.
- ^ Aulard, Alphonse. Ètudes et Leçons sur la Révolution Française. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1913. p. 197.
- ^ Roy, G. Ross. "The French Reputation of Thomas Carlyle in the Nineteenth Century." In Thomas Carlyle 1981: Papers Given at the International Thomas Carlyle Centenary Symposium. ed. Horst W. Drescher, 297–330. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1983. p. 302.
Further reading
- Cobban, Alfred (1963). "Carlyle's French Revolution," History, Vol. XLVIII, No. 164, pp. 306–316.
- Cumming, Mark (1988). A Disimprisoned Epic: Form and Vision in Carlyle's French Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Harrold, Charles Frederick (1928). "Carlyle's General Method in the French Revolution," PMLA, Vol. 43, No. 4, pp. 1150–1169.
- Kerlin, Robert T. (1912). "Contemporary Criticism of Carlyle's 'French Revolution'," The Sewanee Review, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 282–296.
- Wilson, H. Schütz (1894). "Carlyle and Taine on the French Revolution," The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. CCLXXVII, pp. 341–359.
External links
- The French Revolution: A History at Project Gutenberg
- The French Revolution: A History, annotated HTML text, based on the Project Gutenberg version.
- The French Revolution: A History available at Internet Archive, scanned books, original editions, some illustrated.
- The French Revolution: A History, with illustrations by E. J. Sullivan.
- The French Revolution: A History, 1934 edition.
- The French Revolution at Classic Reader, HTML
The French Revolution public domain audiobook at LibriVox