Edit: Ughhh. When you said "portrait", I thought you all meant the descriptive portrait, not the painting. Sorry. Got confused since you were talking of Proyart. :/
I'm actually not sure where the original of the portrait of Robespierre as a child is from. I've seen it in books and around the internet, but I don't recall seeing a source. Which is frustrating, but what can you do?
I might be ready to make an answer on this, but it's basic -- because obviously I haven't yet read so many freaking sources of 400 pages and what more!!1! /insanity.
As I see it from my corpus (which is quite too spread), the childhood part stems from the "biographical/historical genre", which during the Thermidorian Reaction is mainly Montjoie and Proyart. This genre seems to have evolved from the portraits: L. Duperron begins with a few very simple phrases on Robespierre's youth, but not any more, and it's basic.
It seems a lot more came later in the late 1820s -- yes, from Charlotte, but also from Charles Reybaud and Laignelot (who was close to Robespierre) who participated in writing the Mémoires authentiques de Robespierre (which are obviously not). There's only two volumes of those, and they're mostly on Robespierre's childhood and youth. I think it builds up to the États Généraux and that's all. Sergio Luzzatto (author of Mémoire de la Terreur) explains that Charlotte, even if she denied her participation to it, must have had given some details, because those present in the Mémoires authentiques weren't known yet (and I assume show up in Charlotte's own memoirs).
Apart from this, a lot seems to be copy/pasted from narratives around the "poor, envious and frustrated child grows into rebellious leader/assassin" trope. Now, that genre is rather vast.
I wonder if you could find the same sort of stuff written on Cromwell...
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-05-24 05:50 pm (UTC)I'm actually not sure where the original of the portrait of Robespierre as a child is from. I've seen it in books and around the internet, but I don't recall seeing a source. Which is frustrating, but what can you do?
I might be ready to make an answer on this, but it's basic -- because obviously I haven't yet read so many freaking sources of 400 pages and what more!!1! /insanity.
As I see it from my corpus (which is quite
toospread), the childhood part stems from the "biographical/historical genre", which during the Thermidorian Reaction is mainly Montjoie and Proyart. This genre seems to have evolved from the portraits: L. Duperron begins with a few very simple phrases on Robespierre's youth, but not any more, and it's basic.It seems a lot more came later in the late 1820s -- yes, from Charlotte, but also from Charles Reybaud and Laignelot (who was close to Robespierre) who participated in writing the Mémoires authentiques de Robespierre (which are obviously not). There's only two volumes of those, and they're mostly on Robespierre's childhood and youth. I think it builds up to the États Généraux and that's all. Sergio Luzzatto (author of Mémoire de la Terreur) explains that Charlotte, even if she denied her participation to it, must have had given some details, because those present in the Mémoires authentiques weren't known yet (and I assume show up in Charlotte's own memoirs).
Apart from this, a lot seems to be copy/pasted from narratives around the "poor, envious and frustrated child grows into rebellious leader/assassin" trope. Now, that genre is rather vast.
I wonder if you could find the same sort of stuff written on Cromwell...