Synopses & Reviews
Two centuries later, the French Revolution--that extraordinary event that founded modern democracy--continues to give rise to a reevaluation of essential questions. The ambition of this magnificent volume is not only to present the reader with the research of a wide range of international scholars on those questions, but also to bring one into the heart of the issues still under lively debate. Its form is as original as its goal: neither dictionary, in the traditional sense of the word, nor encyclopedia, it is deliberately limited to some ninety-nine entries organized alphabetically by key words and themes under five major headings: events, including the Estates General and the Terror; actors, such as Marie Antoinette, Marat, and Napoleon Bonaparte; institutions and creations, among them Revolutionary Calendar and Suffrage; ideas, covering, for example, Ancien Régime, the American Revolution, and Liberty; and historians and commentators, from Hegel to Tocqueville. In addition, there are synoptic indexes of names and themes that give the reader easy access to the entire volume as well as a key to its profound coherence. What unifies all the varied topics brought together in this dictionary is their authors' effort to be "critical." As such, the book rejects the dogmatism of closed systems and definitive interpretations. Its aim is less to make a complete inventory of the findings of the history of the French Revolution than to take stock of what remains problematical about those findings; this work thus offers the additional special quality of incorporating the rich historiographical literature unceasingly elaborated since 1789. With A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, François Furet and Mona Ozouf invite the reader to recross the first two centuries of French democracy in order to gain a better understanding of the origins of the world in which we live today.
Review
A spectacular collection of essays covering virtually every aspect of the French Revolution, written by the most powerful minds currently working on its history. As a whole, the book provides a stunning vindication of the centrality of politics to the lasting significance of the event. Some of the essays--Furet on Quinet, Higonnet on the Sans-culottes, Ozouf on Revolutionary Religion--are miniature masterpieces. The bicentennial is unlikely to produce any other work that serves up so rich and nourishing an intellectual feast. Michelle Perrot - Liberation
Review
A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution has already been hailed as the literary event of the bicentennial...This success has come from the originality of its format. In effect, the entire team of historians, led by François Furet and Mona Ozouf, has broken with the traditional forms: chronological narratives, monographs, biographies...in order to adopt a new style that reconciles these diverse approaches. The work is erudite but unfolds like a historical novel. It is enormous--a thousand pages--but reads like a magazine with ten-page articles illustrating the one hundred 'key words' of the Revolution. Conor Cruise O ' Brien - New York Review of Books
Review
A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution is really a manifesto representing the views of François Furet, who is now the most influential historian of the French Revolution in the world...Mr. Furet and his collaborators have revived interest in the philosophical problems of modern democracy and shown the importance of the French Revolution in establishing the limits of modern political debate. New Republic
Review
A spectacular collection of essays covering virtually every aspect of the French Revolution, written by the most powerful minds currently working on its history. As a whole, the book provides a stunning vindicationof the centrality of politics to the lasting significance of the event. Some of the essays--Furet on Quinet, Higonnet on the Sans-culottes, Ozouf on Revolutionary Religion--are miniature masterpieces. The bicentennial is unlikely toproduce any other work that serves up so rich and nourishing an intellectual feast.
Review
This Dictionary represents what I would judge to be one of the most comprehensive statements yet of the new historiography, against Annales; and in so doing, it represents what I would also judge to be one of the clearest interpretations of a renewal of liberal thinking in France which in its distinctiveness, its break from standing conceptions, will be of general interest to all but the most parochial of Anglo-Americans. Simon Schama, Harvard University
Review
Not the least merit of Furet and Ozouf's spectacular Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution is to take declared meaning at face value; to restore, in fact, full historical autonomy to the conflict of ideas. Those not within the guild of self-described 'professional historians' may be amazed to hear that such conflicts have ever not been taken seriously in their own right. But it may well have taken this monumental work...to reinstate their full causal power. In the Dictionary, in particular, the play of debate and its intersection with the combat of personalities and the shaping of institutions is given primary significance. The great moments of the French Revolution are rescued from compression into the social structure or burial beneath symbolic bricolage...No praise can really be too high for what this work represents: spectacular scholarship, consistently gripping writing, and intellectual penetration...[It] adds up to a coherent vision of the Revolution (all the more remarkable for being written by more than 20 hands). It is certainly the most enduring book to be published in the bicentennial year. Simon Schama
Review
It was a splendid idea to compile a critical dictionary of the French Revolution, and the idea has been splendidly executed...A great work. Lynn Hunt - New York Times Book Review
Review
In all respects, this Dictionary of more than a thousand pages is a monument of scholarship, and an object of elegant quality, served by original and suggestive illustrations and by a rare quality of writing. Janick Jossin - Le Nouvel Observateur
Synopsis
Two centuries later, the French Revolution--that extraordinary event that founded modern democracy--continues to give rise to a reevaluation of essential questions. The ambition of this volume is not only to present the reader with the research of a wide range of international scholars on those questions, but also to bring one into the heart of the issues still under lively debate.
Synopsis
1990 Translation Prize, Non-Fiction Category, French-American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation
About the Author
Franois Furet, former president of the <>Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, is presently director of the <>Institut Raymond-Aronin Paris and Professor of History and Social Thought at the <>University of Chicago.Mona Ozoufis director of research at the <>Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique. She is the author of Festivals and the French Revolution(Harvard University Press).Arthur Goldhammerreceived the French-American Translation Prize in 1990 for his translation of A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution.
Table of Contents
1. EVENTSChouannerie
François Furet
Coups d'Etat
Denis Richet
De-Christianization
Mona Ozouf
Elections
Patrice Gueniffey
Estates General
Ran Halévi
Federalism
Mona Ozouf
Federation
Mona Ozouf
Great Fear
Jacques Revel
Italian Campaign
Denis Richet
King's Trial
Mona Ozouf
Night of August 4
François Furet
The Revolution and Europe
Alan Forrest
Revolutionary Journées
Denis Richet
Terror
François Furet
Treaties of Basel and The Hague
Denis Richet
Varennes
Mona Ozouf
Vendée
François Furet
2. ACTORS
Individuals
Babeuf
François Furet
Barnave
François Furet
Carnot
Patrice Gueniffey
Condorcet
Keith M. Baker
Danton
Mona Ozouf
Lafayette
Patrice Gueniffey
Louis XVI
François Furet
Marat
Mona Ozouf
Marie Antoinette
Jacques Revel
Mirabeau
François Furet
Napoleon Bonaparte
François Furet
Necker
Marcel Gauchet
Robespierre
Patrice Gueniffey
Sieyès
Keith M. Baker
Groups
Emigrés
Massimo Boffa
Enragés
Denis Richet
Feuillants
Ran Halévi
Girondins
Mona Ozouf
Hébertists
Denis Richet
Monarchiens
Ran Halévi
Montagnards
Mona Ozouf
Sans-culottes
Patrice Higonnet
Thermidorians
Bronislaw Baczko
3. INSTITUTIONS AND CREATIONS
Army
Alan Forrest
Assignats
Michel Bruguière
Civil Code
Joseph Goy
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
François Furet
Clubs and Popular Societies
Patrice Gueniffey and Ran Halévi
Committee of Public Safety
Denis Richet
Constitution
Keith M. Baker
Département
Mona Ozouf
Maximum
François Furet
National Properties
Louis Bergeron
Paris Commune
Patrice Gueniffey
Revolutionary Assemblies
Denis Richet
Revolutionary Calendar
Mona Ozouf
Revolutionary Government
François Furet
Revolutionary Religion
Mona Ozouf
Suffrage
Patrice Gueniffey
Taxes
Gail Bossenga
4. IDEAS
American Revolution
Philippe Raynaud
Ancien Régime
François Furet
Aristocracy
David D. Bien
Centralization
Yann Fauchois
Counterrevolution
Massimo Boffia
Democracy
Philippe Raynaud
Enlightenment
Bronislaw Baczko
Equality
Mona Ozouf
Feudal System
François Furet
Fraternity
Mona Ozouf
Jacobinism
François Furet
Liberty
Mona Ozouf
Montesquieu
Bernard Manin
Nation
Pierre Nora
Natural Borders
Denis Richet
Physiocrats
Pierre Rosanvallon
Public Spirit
Mona Ozouf
Regeneration
Mona Ozouf
Republic
Pierre Nora
Revolution
Mona Ozouf
Rights of Man
Marcel Gauchet
Rousseau
Bernard Manin
Sovereignty
Keith M. Baker
Vandalism
Bronislaw Baczko
Voltaire
Mona Ozouf
5. HISTORIANS AND COMMENTATORS
Academic History of the Revolution
François Furet
Blanc
François Furet
Buchez
François Furet
Burke
Gérard Gengembre
Constant
Marcel Gauchet
Fichte
Luc Ferry
Guizot
Pierre Rosanvallon
Hegel
Luc Ferry
Jaurès
Mona Ozouf
Kant
Luc Ferry
Maistre
Massimo Boffa
Marx
François Furet
Michelet
François Furet
Quinet
François Furet
Staël
Marcel Gauchet
Thine
Mona Ozouf
Tocqueville
François Furet
Contributors
Name Index
Subject Index
Alphabetical List of Articles