Since we haven't had a post in quite some time...

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

How did everyone here become interested in the French Revolution?

For my part, it was that History Channel documentary. And actually, the very name 'Robespierre.' I'd heard about the French Revolution before, but because of its well-known connection with Marie-Antoinette (whom I, for no particular reason that I know of, had completely loathed for as long as I'd been aware she ever existed O.o; Even as a little kid, I would be absolutely disgusted if she was so much as mentioned in passing in something I was reading/watching), I avoided it.

Then, I saw the commercials advertising the documentary. They mentioned Antoinette before Maxime, so I started rolling my eyes. But then they said, "Robespierre!" and all of a sudden my interest was piqued. It sounds strange...but that was it. And of course, then I watched it and the deal was sealed.

I now know that there are much, MUCH better sources, of course, but it is a pretty good way of getting people into the revolution via a perspective that's not strictly 'ZOMG POOR ARISTOS!!!!111 :( :( :(' (even if, coming out of it, you are almost left with the impression that Maxime, Marat, and Danton were the only revolutionaries that existed and Maxime had god-like control of the whole situation; hopefully that'll be cleared up with later research, as it was in my case XD;)

By the way...I know we have someone here who's interested in Manon Roland, so I thought I'd bring up this, which I found not too long ago. Does anyone know anything more about it?

Comments

[cachecache.livejournal.com]

My freshman year of college, I took an upper-level history class called "The French Revolution and Napoleon" because I really loved Napoleon. I'm also a French major, so I felt that it was important to know about the most important event in contemporary French history :P. My professor was an amazing lecturer and he made the already incredibly interesting subject matter even more amazing. We only talked about Napoleon during the last two weeks of the course, but that ended up being perfectly fine with me. I ended up write my term paper on the French Republican Calendar. :D

I'm really glad that I took that course because the French Revolution has touched European (and world!) history so much, it's almost inconceivable. It's definitely my favorite historical period of all time and by the end of the course, I was annoying my friends at lunch by talking about Robepierre et al. all the time. *is a geek*

[jesta-ariadne.livejournal.com]

I just decided to do my A Level independent project on the French Revolution, being pre-disposed to like it because of (a rudimentary knowledge) Les Mis! (I think I originally intended to do something about the Les Mis timeframe, but that changed.) Sooo, I set about finding out everything ever about the Revolution ^^ And picked the title "How far can Maximilien Robespierre be held personally responsible for the events of the Terror" waaay before I'd had time to actually work out what I was about. Soo, that's how it all began...

[vulpea-rea.livejournal.com]

my high school European history teacher touched upon it; his lectures were always pretty fun, although biased, but when he went over Robespierre, he made him sound a lot more awesome than most teachers/professors even give him credit for. i was intrigued. and i certainly wasn't about to feel sorry for the aristo side, whatever the case, so i thought "radical head chopper or not, i'm with Robespierre."

then a bit later i ended up watching the old anime The Rose of Versailles, which was biased, to be sure, but fun to watch, and around the same time i was picking up French Revolution books and ended getting really wrapped up in the Revolutionaries. then i went to France and that pretty much sealed it. xD /ramble okay, i guess that was a number of hazy events, not just one thing.

[jesta-ariadne.livejournal.com]

Does sound like fun a lecturer :) "radical head chopper or not, i'm with Robespierre." Heee.

When we studied it in school (age 13 or something) somehow Robespierre did not get mentioned! Or at least not outside the one-page projects we had to do in pairs. (I got to do the Terror! One page. I was interested to learn that someone called Guillotin invented the guillotine and that's about all I remember. Yeaah.)

[vulpea-rea.livejournal.com]

they actually, somehow, manage to avoid him in a lot of glossing-over explanations. like...the revolutionaries are just an unnamed mass that chop off heads.

[toi-marguerite.livejournal.com]

Rose of Versailles! I loved that Manga, even though it was horrifically biased!

[twirlychelengk.livejournal.com]

History class, freshman year of highschool. The class was lacking somewhat and I did my best to fill up the gaps myself; one of the gaps was the French Revolution, and I'm still trying to fill it. Also because I love Napoleon. Very very much.

[coppertone.livejournal.com]

Ooo, interesting question. ^^

I don't know. I mean, I've been peripherally aware of it since I was verysmall, because my mother studied a lot of French history and used to bring up isolated bits-- I remember, to illustrate Robespierre and his reputation for emotional frigidity, she told me how he coldly ignored a woman who came to plead with him on behalf of her imprisoned husband, which always stuck with me until years later I learned the context, and went "!". XD And I always knew various disconneted trivia, like the tennis court and Marat-in-the-bath, but the closest I got to real interest was an obsession, when I was nine, with the Scarlet Pimpernel. >_>

I guess the really active interest came when I got to study it in eleventh grade. I knew a couple of years in advance that I would, and was insanely excited to learn more, and so when that year finally came around, I dove rather farther into it than the curriculum required. So there: I do know. (And oddly enough mine was also jumpstarted with a name: Camille's. Surprising, I know. Not to say I wouldn't be interested otherwise, but his name caught my attention and provided a focal point that might not otherwise have been there-- or fallen on Saint-Just instead, I don't know. But yes.)

And that is the story of how I got into the French Revolution-- hopefully not too tl;dr. :D

I always liked Antoinette. Or at least, never disliked her. Our republicans would not approve, I know. :(

[spurnedambition.livejournal.com]

I had read Les Mis last year, and on the biographies of Les Amis de l'ABC, there were many allusions to historical figures, one of them Robespierre. After seeing the meager two-paragraph "explanation," I was curious to find out more about the French revolutionaries, so I did more research, when suddenly, I turned on the History Channel, and by pure serendipity, found the French Revolution documentary.
I then decided to do more research on it, going to sites, renting out books, that kind of stuff.

@ vulpea_rea: OMSB I loved that anime...even if it was old and from the aristos' view (<.<), yes, it was really fun to watch.
Almost!bishie pre-Estates General Robespierre, lol.

[vulpea-rea.livejournal.com]

OMSB you should've seen him and Saint-Just in the manga of it! SO PRETTY!

[(Anonymous)]

Links, plz? =D
The US hasn't lisenced the manga, so I can't get it.
And I don't think my parents would be happy if I spent ten dollars on a book that I couldn't read and understand.

But point it, bishonen Jacobins are always a good thing.

[spurnedambition.livejournal.com]

^That was me. *My head and my desk are secret lovers.*

[vulpea-rea.livejournal.com]

here are the whole scans, apparently. but first, feast your eyes this (http://saint-just.net/comics/rovm/rov4.gif).

and here's the whole of it (http://saint-just.net/comics/comics.html), just scroll to the bottom.

[spurnedambition.livejournal.com]

*_*
*is a very happy French Rev. fangirl now*
Thank you! :D

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is an rather long story....But, since you asked I'll tell you (exactly) what I told a friend of mine recently:

"I suppose you could say it really started with my interest in Les
Misérables (which started from listening to a song from the musical on
my sister's ipod during finals the first semester of 9th grade, and then
my listening to the whole musical, and then my reading the book, etc). I
remember feeling vaguely that a lot of people were a bit put off by
Maxime (even though, for some reason, Enjolras, who is supposed to be
based on him and Saint-Just is loved by all *headdesk*), but I didn't
really think about it much. Then we "studied" the Revolution in history
class, and I still didn't think much about it, since, despite my love of
history, the teacher of that course managed to make everything
exceedingly dull (and somehow, after "studying" the Enlightenment, got
people to remember Locke and Montesquieu's philosophies as being
essentially the same, and Rousseau as some kind of a hippy -___-;). Then
I watched the History Channel's (terrible, but I didn't know that at the
time) documentary on the Revolution and I did come out of it thinking
that Maxime was a dictator, but somehow not an evil or bloodthirsty one.
At this point the chronology becomes a bit messed up, but at some time in
the following few weeks I got a mostly sympathetic but rather bizarre
biography of Maxime, found these websites:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca6/frenchrevolution89/revcontents.html and http://saint-just.net, read City of Darkness, City
of Light (despite the fact that this was not really the object, the
character I sympathized most with in the book was Maxime), I got the
musical about the Revolution by the creators of the one on Les
Misérables, read A Place of Greater Safety, saw the film
Danton, and so on it goes.

...You might think the sources I was reading might make me inclined to
like Camille. I did for about two days, until my sister started squeeing
over him and I found my disposition for being different made me prefer
Maxime and also Saint-Just (although I was convinced that the latter was
crazy--it's really the fault of that first website -__-;). And thus, I
started out liking them despite their supposed "evilness and craziness"
and eventually realized (when I started reading actual non-fiction) that
this wasn't true. I did have quite a dilemma with myself reading through
sources like Hampson's biography of Maxime though. By the point I was
reading that (late August of that same year) I was convinced that Maxime
was not in fact evil, although I still didn't have much that
agreed with me on this....but I figured, as I am sure many do without
ever going further than Hampson and without my initial resistance, that
"he's a historian so he must know more about it than me" and I was
extremely depressed, because I knew someone who had said what he had and
done what he had couldn't be evil, but of course I needed a historian who
shared my views because I couldn't do archival research myself,
obviously...

...That first year was very difficult. But I survived, as you can see,
and I now have more evidence to support my views than anyone who tries to
argue with me, so... yes."

That's probably a lot more complicated than the stories most people have, right? *headdesk* I think I'm just strange. But most importantly, it seems early sources seem to have had very little effect on me (certainly an encouraging sign). Note the contrast between my icon and the film Danton, XD!

[citoyenne.livejournal.com]

I discovered the revolution through a film adaption of Jostein Gaarder's "Sophie's World", where Robespierre pops up and talks to Sophie during Marie Olympe de Gouges execution. He quoted Rousseau, something like: "The fruits of the world belong to everyone, but the world itself belongs to no one". Liberte, egalite, fraternite banners, beautiful citoyennes on their way to the guillotine - I was enchanted.
After several years, i re-discovered my mother's favourite musical; Les Miserables and read the novel and it rekindled my love for the "real revolution" as well.

I
remember feeling vaguely that a lot of people were a bit put off by
Maxime.

My last teacher in history did not care for him at all and together with the throughout negative portrayal of him in our textbook (Well, that textbook claimed that Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake" as well...)I also got that feeling, in real life, more than vaguely.
I think my love for him just increased because everyone seemed to loathe him, but then I came here I discovered that you're all kinda ZOMG MAXIME IS TEH SEX!!1!! and it makes me very happy :)

As for the Roland film, I've never seen it, but I surely wish I could.

[spurnedambition.livejournal.com]

Ugh. That must not be a very accurate textbook. :/
But Maxime /is/ teh sex...=D

[toi-marguerite.livejournal.com]

Wow, everyone seems to be coming in from 'Les Mis'. Thought I adore 'Les Mis', I actually came into the French Revolutionary fandom from the book 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' which is incredibly biased for the British, but an inordinate amount of fun regardless.