Lynn Hunt

Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution

After the fall of Robespierre, the noted literary critic and author Jean-Francois La Harpe publiched a long reflection entitled Du Fanatisme dans la langue revolutionnaire. La Harpe's arguments were not in themselves surprising: he traced the perversities of the Revolution back to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and he attributed the frenzy of 'this abominable revolutionary spirit' to philosophie run riot. Most instructive, however, is La Harpe's conviction that the key to the Revolution's aberrations was its language. La Harpe, in fact, offered little analysis of this language itself; he was more interested in denouncing its consequences than in examining its causes or functioning. Yet his vitriolic pamphlet is nonetheless significant, because it shows that the revolutionaries themselves recognized the importance of language in the Revolution.

The crumbling of the French state after 1786 let loose a deluge of words, in print, in conversations, and in political meetings. There had been a few dozen periodicals—hardly any of which carried what we call news—circulating in Paris during the 1780s; more than 500 appeared between 14 July 1789 and 10 August 1792. Something similar happened to the theater: in contrast to the handful of new plays produced annually before the Revolution, at least 1,500 new plays, many of them topical, were produced between 1789 and 1799, and more than 750 were staged just in the years 1792-94. Political clubs proliferated at every level, and electoral assemblies seemed to meet almost continuously during the Revolution's first heady years. Added to these occasions were the countless festivals organized all over the country for the purposes of commemoration and celebration. Everywhere, in short, talk was the order of the day.

Words came in torrents, but even more important was their unique, magical quality. From the beginning of the Revolution, words were invested with great passion. By the fall of 1789, Etes-vous de la Nation? had become the watchword of National Guard patrols. As the king's sacred position in society eroded, political language became increasingly invested with emotional, even life-and-death, significance. Words associated with the Old Regime, names tainted with royalism, aristocracy, or privilege, became taboo. Procureurs and avocats (Old Regime legal types) became hommes de loi (simple 'men of the law') if they wanted to continue legal practice; impots were replaced with contributions, which sounded more voluntary. Wherever names were identified with Old Regime values, they were supplanted by new revolutionary (often Greek or Roman) appellations. Babies were named after classical heroes; the historic provinces were replaced with geographically identified departments; and rebellious towns were rechristened when they were retaken. At the height of the concern with names, in 1793, a deputation from one of the Paris sections suggested to the National Convention that it systematically rename streets and public squares after 'all the virtues necessary to the Republic.' This would give the people 'a silent course in ethics.'

Certain key words served as revolutionary incantations. Nation was perhaps the most universally sacred, but there were also patrie, constitution, law, and, more specific to the radicals, regeneration, virtue, and vigilance. Uttered in a certain context or included in soon-familiar formulaic expressions, such words bespoke nothing less than adherence to the revolutionary community. Revolutionaries placed such emphasis on the ritual use of words because they were seeking a replacement for the charisma of kingship. Primary among ritual words was the revolutionary oath, or what La Harpe derided as 'an incurable mania for oaths.' As Jean Starobinski argues, the revolutionary oath of loyalty became an important ritual because it underlined the contrast between national sovereignty and the authority of kings. The kings received 'the supernatural insignia of power' from a transcendent God during the ceremony of consecration; by contrast, the revolutionary oath of loyalty created sovereignty from within the community.