The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Centennial Book)

This latest work from an author known for her contributions to the new cultural history is a multidisciplinary investigation of the foundations of modern politics. "Family Romance" was coined by Freud to describe the fantasy of being freed from one's family and joining one of higher social standing. Lynn Hunt uses the term broadly to describe the images of the familial order underlying revolutionary politics. In a wide-ranging account using novels, engravings, paintings, speeches, newspaper editorials, pornographic writing, and revolutionary legislation about the family, Hunt shows that politics were experienced through the grid of the family romance. Library Journal 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., N.J. 00000001.tif.3......Page 2 00000004.tif.3......Page 5 00000007.tif.3......Page 8 00000010.tif.3......Page 11 00000013.tif.3......Page 14 00000016.tif.3......Page 17 00000019.tif.3......Page 20 00000022.tif.3......Page 23 00000025.tif.3......Page 26 00000028.tif.3......Page 29 00000031.tif.3......Page 32 00000034.tif.3......Page 35 00000037.tif.3......Page 38 00000040.tif.3......Page 41 00000043.tif.3......Page 44 00000046.tif.3......Page 47 00000049.tif.3......Page 50 00000052.tif.3......Page 53 00000055.tif.3......Page 56 00000058.tif.3......Page 59 00000061.tif.3......Page 62 00000064.tif.3......Page 65 00000067.tif.3......Page 68 00000070.tif.3......Page 71 00000073.tif.3......Page 74 00000076.tif.3......Page 77 00000079.tif.3......Page 80 00000082.tif.3......Page 83 00000085.tif.3......Page 86 00000088.tif.3......Page 89 00000091.tif.3......Page 92 00000094.tif.3......Page 95 00000097.tif.3......Page 98 00000100.tif.3......Page 101 00000103.tif.3......Page 104 00000106.tif.3......Page 107 00000109.tif.3......Page 110 00000112.tif.3......Page 113 00000115.tif.3......Page 116 00000118.tif.3......Page 119 00000121.tif.3......Page 122 00000124.tif.3......Page 125 00000127.tif.3......Page 128 00000130.tif.3......Page 131 00000133.tif.3......Page 134 00000136.tif.3......Page 137 00000139.tif.3......Page 140 00000142.tif.3......Page 143 00000145.tif.3......Page 146 00000148.tif.3......Page 149 00000151.tif.3......Page 152 00000154.tif.3......Page 155 00000157.tif.3......Page 158 00000160.tif.3......Page 161 00000163.tif.3......Page 164 00000166.tif.3......Page 167 00000169.tif.3......Page 170 00000172.tif.3......Page 173 00000175.tif.3......Page 176 00000178.tif.3......Page 179 00000181.tif.3......Page 182 00000184.tif.3......Page 185 00000187.tif.3......Page 188 00000190.tif.3......Page 191 00000193.tif.3......Page 194 00000196.tif.3......Page 197 00000199.tif.3......Page 200 00000202.tif.3......Page 203 00000205.tif.3......Page 206 00000208.tif.3......Page 209 00000211.tif.3......Page 212 00000214.tif.3......Page 215 00000217.tif.3......Page 218 00000220.tif.3......Page 221 00000223.tif.3......Page 224 00000226.tif.3......Page 227 00000229.tif.2......Page 230 This latest work from an author known for her contributions to the new cultural history is a daring multidisciplinary investigation of the imaginative foundations of modern politics. "Family romance" was coined by Freud to describe the fantasy of being freed from one's family and belonging to one of higher social standing. In Freud's view, the family romance was a way for individuals to fantasize about their place in the social order. Hunt uses the term more broadly, to describe the images of the familial order underlying revolutionary politics. She investigates the narratives of family relations that structured the collective political unconscious. Most Europeans in the eighteenth century thought of their rulers as fathers and of their nations as families writ large. The French Revolution violently disrupted that patriarchal model of authority and raised troubling questions about what was to replace it. The king and queen were executed after dramatic separate trials. Prosecutors in the trial of the queen accused her of exerting undue influence on the king and his ministers, engaging in sexual debauchery, and even committing incest with her eight-year-old son. Hunt focuses on the meaning of killing the king-father and the queen-mother and what these ritual sacrifices meant to the establishment of a new model of politics. In a wide-ranging account that uses novels, engravings, paintings, speeches, newspaper editorials, pornographic writing, and revolutionary legislation about the family, Hunt shows that politics were experienced through the grid of the family romance. This latest work from an author known for her contributions to the new cultural history is a multidisciplinary investigation of the foundations of modern politics. "Family Romance" was coined by Freud to describe the fantasy of being freed from one's family & joining one of higher social standing. Lynn Hunt uses the term broadly to describe the images of the familial order underlying revolutionary politics. In a wide-ranging account using novels, engravings, paintings, speeches, newspaper editorials, pornographic writing & revolutionary legislation about the family, Hunt shows that politics were experienced thru the grid of the family romance. List of Illustrations Preface The family model of politics The rise & fall of the good father The band of brothers The bad mother Sade's family politics Rehabilitating the family Epilogue: Patriarchy in the Past Tense? Index Using a wide range of artistic, iconographic, literary and historical sources, Lynn Hunt undertakes a Freudian influenced analysis of the French Revolution to examine the breakdown of patriarchal model of authority.