The Family Romance of the French Revolution
Not just for French specialists, this difficult yet fascinating book should also interest psychohistorians, cultural-intellectual scholars and political scientists. Recognizing that absolutism rested on a model of patriarchal authority, cultural historian Hunt ( Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution , Univ. of California Pr., 1989) uses Freudian terminology to explore what the killing of the father-king Louis XVI meant to the revolutionaries creating a new political order. Examining contemporary painting, literature, and iconography to see how those meanings are expressed, she uncovers the "collective unconscious images of the familial order" underlying revolutionary beliefs. Motivating the political struggle, she demonstrates, were changing cultural notions of what defined a "good" mother or father, the republican focus on fraternity rather than patriarchy, and efforts to democratize family life.- Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll.,Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.