Synopses & Reviews
Festivals and the French Revolution--the subject conjures up visions of goddesses of Liberty, strange celebrations of Reason, and the oddly pretentious cult of the Supreme Being. Every history of the period includes some mention of festivals, although most historians have been content either to ridicule them as ineffectual or to bemoan them as repugnant examples of a sterile, official culture. Mona Ozouf shows us that they were much more than bizarre marginalia to the revolutionary process. Festivals offer critical insights into the meaning of the French Revolution; they show a society in the process of creating itself anew.
Historians have recognized the importance of the revolutionary festival as a symbol of the Revolution. But they have differed widely in their interpretations of what that symbol meant and have considered the festivals as diverse as the rival political groups that conceived and organized them. Against this older vision, Ozouf argues for the fundamental coherence and profound unity of the festival as both event and register of reference and attitude. By comparing the most ideologically opposed festivals (those of Reason and the Supreme Being, for instance), she shows that they clearly share a common aim, which finds expression in a mutual ceremonial and symbolic vocabulary. Through a brilliant discussion of the construction, ordering, and conduct of the festival Ozouf demonstrates how the continuity of the images, allegories, ceremonials, and explicit functions can be seen as the Revolution's own commentary on itself.
A second and important aim of this book is to show that this system of festivals, often seen as destructive, was an immensely creative force. The festival was the mirror in which the Revolution chose to see itself and the pedagogical tool by which it hoped to educate future generations, Far from being a failure, it embodied, socialized, and made sacred a new set of values based on the family, the nation, and mankind--the values of a modern, secular, liberal world.
About the Author
Mona Ozoufis director of research at the <>Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique. She is the author ofFestivals and the French Revolution(Harvard University Press).Alan Sheridan's most recent book is Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth. He has also translated over 50 books, including works by Sartre, Lacan, andFoucault.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Lynn Hunt
The Republican Calendar
Brief Chronology of the French Revolution
Introduction
I. The History of the Revolutionary Festival
The Revolution as Festival
History of the Festivals, History of the Sects
Boredom and Disgust
II. The Festival of the Federation: Model and Reality
Riot and Festival: The "Wild" Federations
The Federative Festivals
The Paris Federation
A New Festival?
The Festival of All the French?
III. The Festival above the Parties: 1792
The Norm and the Exception
Two Antagonistic Festivals?
The Unity of Tragedy
IV. Mockery and Revolution: 1793-1794
The "Other" Festival
Where, When, with Whom?
Reasonable Reason
Violence and the Festival
V. Return to the Enlightenment: 1794-1799
The "Happy Nation"
The System of Brumaire, Year IV
VI. The Festival and Space
Space without Qualities
The Symbolic Mapping-Out
The Renovation of a Ceremonial Space: The Example of Caen
The Resistance of Paris
The Space-Time of the Revolution
VII. The Festival and Time
Beginning
Dividing Up
Commemorating
Ending
VIII. The Future of the Festival: Festival and Pedagogy
"The Schools of the Mature Man"
The Power of Images
The Correct Use of Images
Nothing Goes without Saying
IX. Popular Life and the Revolutionary Festival
A Shameful Ethnology
History of a Failure
Revolutionary Symbolism and Peasant Tradition
The Mai sauvage
A Pedagogical Tree
From the Maypole to the Tree
A Break
X. The Revolutionary Festival: A Transfer of Sacrality
Horror vacui
The Meaning of a Few Borrowings
The Meaning of Purging
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index