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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Miller, Mary Ashburn, 1979-

Title A natural history of revolution : violence and nature in the French revolutionary imagination, 1789-1794 / Mary Ashburn Miller.

Publication Info. Ithaca [N.Y.] : Cornell University Press, [2011]
©2011

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xv, 231 pages) : illustrations
Physical Medium polychrome.
Description text file
PDF
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Ordering a disordered world -- Terrible like an earthquake : violence as a "revolution of the earth" -- Lightning strikes -- Pure mountain, corruptive swamp -- "Mountain, become a volcano" -- Conclusion : Revolutionary like nature, natural like a revolution.
Summary How did the French Revolutionaries explain, justify, and understand the extraordinary violence of their revolution? In debating this question, historians have looked to a variety of eighteenth-century sources, from Rousseau's writings to Old Regime protest tactics. A Natural History of Revolution suggests that it is perhaps on a different shelf of the Enlightenment library that we might find the best clues for understanding the French Revolution: namely, in studies of the natural world. In their attempts to portray and explain the events of the Revolution, political figures, playwrights, and journalists often turned to the book of nature: phenomena such as hailstorms and thunderbolts found their way into festivals, plays, and political speeches as descriptors of revolutionary activity. The particular way that revolutionaries deployed these metaphors drew on notions derived from the natural science of the day about regeneration, purgation, and balance. In examining a series of tropes (earthquakes, lightning, mountains, swamps, and volcanoes) that played an important role in the public language of the Revolution, A Natural History of Revolution reveals that understanding the use of this natural imagery is fundamental to our understanding of the Terror. Eighteenth-century natural histories had demonstrated that in the natural world, apparent disorder could lead to a restored equilibrium, or even regeneration. This logic drawn from the natural world offered the revolutionaries a crucial means of explaining and justifying revolutionary transformation. If thunder could restore balance in the atmosphere, and if volcanic eruptions could create more fertile soil, then so too could episodes of violence and disruption in the political realm be portrayed as necessary for forging a new order in revolutionary France.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Language In English.
Subject Violence -- Political aspects -- France -- History -- 18th century.
Violence -- Political aspects.
France.
History.
Chronological Term 18th century
Subject Natural disasters -- Political aspects -- France -- History -- 18th century.
Violence.
Natural disasters.
Rhetoric -- Political aspects -- France -- History -- 18th century.
Rhetoric -- Political aspects.
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799.
Natural disasters -- Political aspects.
HISTORY -- Europe -- France.
Revolution (France : 1789-1799)
Chronological Term 1700 - 1799
Genre/Form History.
Other Form: Print version: Miller, Mary Ashburn, 1979- Natural history of revolution. Ithaca [N.Y.] : Cornell University Press, 2011 9780801449420 (DLC) 2010052643 (OCoLC)687613872
ISBN 9780801460845 (electronic book)
0801460840 (electronic book)
9780801449420 (cloth ; alkaline paper)
0801449421 (cloth ; alkaline paper)
Standard No. 10.7591/9780801460845
40019477530