Sylvain Maréchal had a precocious autobiographical drive, which remained concurrent to his intellectual evolution – before, during, and after the French Revolution. His self-writing lays out an interesting case-study in intellectual history which has wide implications: the possibility of comparing to a later self-image a self-representation built before the Revolution by a future revolutionary intellectual, offers a new perspective on the study of the realities and historiographical representations of the revolutionary motivation of late 18th-century younger French intellectuals. One of the drawbacks of Robert Darnton’s perspective is his choice of emblematic figures among the revolutionaries. His figures of reference are acceptable as emblematic only if we also accept a reduction of the Revolution to the topos of the storms of the Terror and to the discursive practices of that limited period. Maréchal, like many other revolutionary intellectuals, lived through all the phases of the Revolution and died a natural death under the Consulate: for this simple reason, he seems more exemplary of the motivations and of the enigma of consistency characterizing that generation, whose members felt they had lived several lives in one.
Mannucci, E. (2007). Autobiografia di Grub Street: l'immagine di sé di Sylvain Maréchal (1750-1803). SOCIETÀ E STORIA, 118(ottobre-dicembre 2007), 707-732.
Autobiografia di Grub Street: l'immagine di sé di Sylvain Maréchal (1750-1803)
MANNUCCI, ERICA JOY
2007
Abstract
Sylvain Maréchal had a precocious autobiographical drive, which remained concurrent to his intellectual evolution – before, during, and after the French Revolution. His self-writing lays out an interesting case-study in intellectual history which has wide implications: the possibility of comparing to a later self-image a self-representation built before the Revolution by a future revolutionary intellectual, offers a new perspective on the study of the realities and historiographical representations of the revolutionary motivation of late 18th-century younger French intellectuals. One of the drawbacks of Robert Darnton’s perspective is his choice of emblematic figures among the revolutionaries. His figures of reference are acceptable as emblematic only if we also accept a reduction of the Revolution to the topos of the storms of the Terror and to the discursive practices of that limited period. Maréchal, like many other revolutionary intellectuals, lived through all the phases of the Revolution and died a natural death under the Consulate: for this simple reason, he seems more exemplary of the motivations and of the enigma of consistency characterizing that generation, whose members felt they had lived several lives in one.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.