4.6 The Terror in action The year of authorised state terror from July 1793 to July 1794 was ‘the climactic year of the Revolution’ (Palmer, 1971, p. 113). Under the Committee of Public Safety, now including Robespierre, ‘revolutionary tribunals’, backed in every commune by a ‘revolutionary committee’ or ‘watch committee’ (comité de surveillance), were set up throughout France, staffed by members of the local Jacobin clubs and the sans-culottes to root out counter-revolutionaries, real
4.3 Birth of the republic: war, civil war and terror After the church and monarchy, ‘war was the third great polarizing issue of the Revolution’ (Doyle, 2001, p. 50). With a declaration by the Assembly in July 1792 of la patrie en danger (the fatherland in danger), Prussian troops on French soil in August, and the fall of the border fortress of Verdun in September, there was mass panic in Paris, with accusations of treachery against the king and queen, Lafayette (who fled abroad), ‘aristocrats’ and priests. In the ‘September ma
4.2 Political polarization and the fall of the monarchy By 1792 the liberal constitutionalists of 1789, men like Lafayette, found themselves increasingly on the defensive. There was growing hostility to the National Assembly, with its limited franchise and ‘aristocracy of the rich’. A fringe of radical deputies seated on the left of the Assembly (the political terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ date from this period) were supported in Paris and across France by numerous radical political organizations or ‘clubs’, notably a club calling itsel
1 Enlightenment, liberty and revolution The main aim of this unit is to provide you with basic historical background on the French Revolution, which marked a watershed in the history and culture of the period 1780–1830. The documents and illustrations associated with it are there to illustrate and bring out the points made. The first exercise is preceded by an extended preamble designed to facilitate your reading and understanding of the first document. This should in turn point a way towards engaging with other documents and ill
Learning outcomes By the end of your work on this unit you should have: an understanding of the main events of the French Revolution 1789–99 and its significance in the shift in European culture from Enlightenment to Romanticism; an enhanced appreciation of the French Revolution and its significance through exposure to selected contemporary texts, documents and illustrations of the period.
Introduction This unit provides basic historical background to the French Revolution. It will show that the Revolution accelerated intellectual, cultural and psychological change, and opened up new horizons and possibilities. In fact, while much controversy and scepticism remain as to the real extent of underlying change in the social and economic structure of France, it is generally agreed by scholars that the Revolution stimulated a widening of expectations and imaginative awareness: a belief, inherited
Acknowledgements This unit was written by Dr Alan Wilson
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce
Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: assess the specific problems concerning the health of a community; describe how medical knowledge was a resource for, and was shaped by, broader cultural perceptions of the body.
1.3 Napier's approach to logarithms Napier's major and more lasting invention, that of logarithms, forms a very interesting case study in mathematical development. Within a century or so what started life as merely an aid to calculation, a set of ‘excellent briefe rules’, as Napier called them, came to occupy a central role within the body of theoretical mathematics. The basic idea of what logarithms were to achieve is straightforward: to replace the wearisome task of multiplying two numbers by the simpler task
Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should: understand the significance of John Napier's contributions to mathematics; give examples of the factors that influenced Napier's mathematical work.
References 2.8 Further reading Gombrich, E.H. (1971) ‘Psycho-analysis and the history of art’ in Meditations on a Hobby Horse (2nd edn), London, Phaidon, pp. 30–44. Iseminger, G. (ed.) (1992) Intention and Interpretation, Philadelphia, Temple University Press. Shiff, R. (1996) ‘Originality’ in Shiff, R. and Nelson, R.S. (eds) Critical Terms for Art History, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 103–15. Soussloff, C.M. (1997) ‘The artist in myth: early 2.7 Art, life and the interpretation of pictures David Carrier's book, Principles of Art History Writing (1991) considers the way that Caravaggio has been constructed as an artistic personality (the relevant chapter is below). The objective of Carrier's book as a whole is to demonstrate that the ‘appeal to the artist's intention adds nothing’ to the interpretation of his artworks (recall the discussion of Wimsatt and Beardsley in Author(s): 1.5 Further reading Battersby, C. (1989) Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics, London, Women's Press. Kris, E. and Kurz, O. (1979) Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment, New Haven and London, Yale University Press. Soussloff, C.M. (1997) ‘The artist in nature: Renaissance biography’, The Absolute Artist: The Historiography of a Concept, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 43–72. White, H. (1990) Content Acknowledgements This unit was written by Dr Michael Beaney Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reprodu 4.5 Two mythological songs: ‘Prometheus’ (1819) and ‘Ganymed’ (1817) Goethe's poem ‘Heidenröslein’, with which we began, is a mock folksong; ‘Erlkönig’ is a mock ballad along the lines of Scottish models. They are, so to speak, poems in fancy dress. ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Ganymed’ are songs on subjects from ancient Greek myth, but they are in no way imitations of ancient classical models. In these two poems Goethe has taken myths and created modern meditations on them of startling, but quite distinct, kinds. 4.2 Simplicity and complexity As we have already discovered, the concept of ‘simplicity’ is not a simple matter. We saw earlier in the unit that the simplicity of folk-song is not the same as classical simplicity, though both influenced the taste of Lieder writers. ‘Heidenröslein’ and ‘Wandrers Nachtlied’ are simple in quite different ways, both in their poetry and in their music. Many other songs by Schubert are much longer, much more complex, and treat the poetry with much greater freedom. This aspect of Sc Learning outcomes By the end of your work on this unit you should: have learned about Schubert's place as a composer in early nineteenth-century Vienna; have learned about the place of Schubert in the history of German song and the development of Romanticism; be able to follow the words of songs by Schubert while listening to a recording, using parallel German and English texts; be able to comment on the relationship between words and music in Schubert References References
