Marat and Robespierre
Submitted by Michelle Hwang on Thu, 02/10/2011 - 01:34So as I think someone might have said before me, I really had no idea how to approach finding content for this blog post. It seems a bit too over-arching to make statements about pre-war French-British relations from one piece. I did, however, find an interesting piece in The New Age from an English-American author Francis Grierson. He wrote an essay on two historical figures from the French Revolution. I'm not entirely clear as to the timing or reason for the piece (placed in a British journal in 1909, about French revolutionists of the late 18th century, from an American author). It was unique, however, that I found both the style of the piece as well as the "intent" of it interesting.
The first thing that struck me about the essay was the way it was written--in a fictional, "epic" tone that glorified two specific characters rather than their environment. There was a tone of fate and extreme levels of drama in it. Marat and Robespierre are portrayed as heroes of sorts. Oddly enough, the characters are glorified whereas the situation doesn't seem to be. I'm not sure of its significance, but I considered the need for revolution against the monarchy to not be elevated in a journal of a monarchist society.