Description
Book SynopsisWhat is turmoil? How may it be captured? What were its manifestations in the eighteenth century? Why does it feel so familiar, even urgent, nowadays?
This volume proposes a completely new ontology of turmoil through study of its incidence and impact in the eighteenth-century francophone context. The interdisciplinary essays in this bilingual volume provide multiple illustrations of eighteenth-century instability and insecurity, as well as subsequent adjustments to a post-turmoil new normal. Each instance illuminates human resilience and the mechanisms of post-turmoil elasticity and adaptation in Enlightenment, revolutionary and post-revolutionary writing by female authors Charrière and Monbart, in publications by male authors Beaumarchais, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chamfort, Dupaty, Raynal, Sade and Voltaire, and also in writing by relatively unknown authors, journalists and critics, who capture the turmoil of the global francophone eighteenth-century world. The topics explored emerge as universal ones, familiar to a modern readership: textual and visual revisionism, symbolism within natural disasters, realignment of beliefs, instability of memory, repositioning of historical narratives, female insecurity, attacks on public figures, post-revolutionary resilience and the impact of exile. Through its unique identification of three key generative indicators for turmoil —phenomenon, paradigm shift, elasticity of adaptation— this volume’s contributors deliver a distinctive, rich and new ontology of turmoil.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Catriona Seth. Preface.
Síofra Pierse. Introduction: Turmoil, Instability, Adaptation, Elasticity in the Eighteenth-Century Francophone Text
SECTION I – Intimations of Insecurity
Ioana Galleron and Chiara Mainardi. Troubles, désordres, crises: une approche numérique des expressions de la tourmente au XVIIIe siècle
Kate E. Tunstall. The Knife and the Pen: The Attentat of 1757
James Hanrahan. Political Turmoil in Voltaire’s Vision and Revision of the Fronde
SECTION II – Filtering Natural Disasters
Jenny Mander. The Antilles, the Natural History of Hurricanes and Earthquakes, the Seven Years’ War and Global Commerce through the Lens of Abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes
Laurence Macé. (Ré)inventer le Vésuve, modéliser la catastrophe, vivre la tourmente: Dupaty en Italie méridionale à la veille de la Révolution
Síofra Pierse. Voltaire and the Lisbon Disaster: From Aftershocks to Ataraxy
SECTION III – Instability and Memory
Cyril Francès. Poétique de l’émotion populaire dans les Tableaux historiques de la Révolution française de Nicolas Chamfort
Adam Schoene. Turmoil and Corruption in Joséphine de Monbart’s Lettres tahitiennes
Erin-Marie Legacey. Disorder and the Dead in Revolutionary Paris
SECTION IV – Sade and Female Marginalisation
Edward T. O’Sullivan. Fictional Turmoil: The Bloodlust of Women in Sadean Libertine Narratives
Shasha Ma. L’Insécurité du sexe féminin: de l’infanticide au féminicide chez Sade
SECTION V – Resilience post Turmoil
Simon Davies. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: le solitaire engagé
Gabriel-Robert Thibault. La Résistance spirituelle dans la France des philosophes
Emma M. Dunne. ‘A moi! A un proscrit! A un malheureux fugitif!’: Isabelle de Charrière’s Emigré-e-s amid the Turmoil of Exile
John Leigh. Revolutionary Upheaval and Domestic Turmoil in Beaumarchais’s unsung play La Mère coupable
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography of Works Cited
Index
