Maréchal was part of a generation which was not “born” with the Revolution: he had had a role in Parisian literary life since 1770, and as an author he was an atheist, an egalitarian and a republican well before the Revolution. He had assimilated a complex cultural tradition, and developed an original intellectual style, which enabled him to express in a rather direct language the anticipation of deep and imminent social and political changes. The actions and writings of this independent man in the period from 1793 to Thermidor show the ways in which a revolutionary intellectual who avoided affiliation met the rapid changes and the constraints and pressures of that period, positioning himself between conformity and heterodoxy, between critical thought and opportunistic prudence, or between different levels of communication and medias (both newspapers or the theatre, with the notorious play Jugement dernier des rois, and scholarly and political works). This constant repositioning also generated some dimensions of possibility, that is, alternative (anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist etc.) republican views, which reveal themselves as thinkable in the period that led to the Terror and at later turning points. An interdisciplinary reassessment of his intellectual production is all the more interesting because Maréchal’s contents have been typically interpreted (in the 19th and 20th centuries) according to preconceptions based on strong paradigms or evaluative preoccupations to “justify” or “condemn”, overlooking the vitality of certain ideas with deep philosophical roots, such as atheism or cosmopolitanism, as hazardously developed by a militant author in the accelerated experience of revolutionary life and of its evolving communication and publics.
Mannucci, E. (2008). Conformité et hétérodoxie chez Sylvain Maréchal. In M. Biard (a cura di), Les politiques de la Terreur (1793-1794) (pp. 379-389). Rennes : Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
Conformité et hétérodoxie chez Sylvain Maréchal
MANNUCCI, ERICA JOY
2008
Abstract
Maréchal was part of a generation which was not “born” with the Revolution: he had had a role in Parisian literary life since 1770, and as an author he was an atheist, an egalitarian and a republican well before the Revolution. He had assimilated a complex cultural tradition, and developed an original intellectual style, which enabled him to express in a rather direct language the anticipation of deep and imminent social and political changes. The actions and writings of this independent man in the period from 1793 to Thermidor show the ways in which a revolutionary intellectual who avoided affiliation met the rapid changes and the constraints and pressures of that period, positioning himself between conformity and heterodoxy, between critical thought and opportunistic prudence, or between different levels of communication and medias (both newspapers or the theatre, with the notorious play Jugement dernier des rois, and scholarly and political works). This constant repositioning also generated some dimensions of possibility, that is, alternative (anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist etc.) republican views, which reveal themselves as thinkable in the period that led to the Terror and at later turning points. An interdisciplinary reassessment of his intellectual production is all the more interesting because Maréchal’s contents have been typically interpreted (in the 19th and 20th centuries) according to preconceptions based on strong paradigms or evaluative preoccupations to “justify” or “condemn”, overlooking the vitality of certain ideas with deep philosophical roots, such as atheism or cosmopolitanism, as hazardously developed by a militant author in the accelerated experience of revolutionary life and of its evolving communication and publics.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.