Violence or joy? The plays on the Storming of the Bastille (1789-1791) as a mirror of the coeval political discourse

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i7.10522

Keywords:

The Storming of the Bastille, Theater of the French Revolution, popular anger, Harny de Guerville, La Liberté conquise

Abstract

The spectacular dimension and the significant political and symbolic value of the storming of the Bastille motivate its massive (re)evocation through an important iconographic and textual production. Moreover, numerous dramatizations were performed from September 1789 until autumn 1791. Throughout this period, the gradual disappearance of any allusion to the popular violence exercised by an angry crowd against De Launay, Du Pujet, Flesselles, Berthier de Sauvigny and Foulon shows that playwrights mirrored the new institutional and political discourse trying to depoliticize popular anger by placing more emphasis on the festive dimension of the founding day.

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Author Biography

Paola Perazzolo, University of Verona

Paola Perazzolo is Associate Professor in French literature at the University of Verona. Her research centers on the narrative and dramatic production of the Eighteenth century and the Tournant des Lumières, and particularly on the dramatic texts of the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods explored in their interaction between literature, history, history of ideas, politics. She has participated in international projects on this subject (Therepsicore, French Theater of the Napoleonic Era, Rev.E, Horizon 2020, of which she was PI), to which she has also devoted several articles. She is the author of a monograph on Isabelle de Charrière, has edited two plays from the revolutionary decade (G.-M. Legouvé, La mort d’Abel, Cambridge, MHRA, 2016; H. de Guerville, La Liberté conquered ou le Despotisme reversé, Verona, Fiorini, 2012) and co-edited several collective works, including four on the dramatic art of the period 1789-1815 (Vie des théâtres et poésie dramatique du Consulat à la Restauration (1799-1823), Publif@rum, 2022; Les masques de l’Empereur: Napoléon en spectacle, RIEF, 2021; Theatre, identité et politique culturelle sous le Consulat et l’Empire, Studi Francesi 191, 2020; La Révolution sur scène, Studi Francesi 169, 2013).

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Published

2023-12-06

How to Cite

Perazzolo, P. (2023). Violence or joy? The plays on the Storming of the Bastille (1789-1791) as a mirror of the coeval political discourse. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (7), 257–272. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i7.10522

Issue

No. 7 (2023): Escapes and returns. Rewritings of exodus in contemporary arts

Section

Varia

License

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