Monthly Discussion Point: Maximilien Robespierre

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

This month's discussion point is Maximilien Robespierre.

Because it's his birthday in a few days. Discuss any and all aspects of his life, his work, his views, his reputation, and anything else you think of!

Comments

[maelipstick.livejournal.com]

I could talk about Robespierre at Louis-le-Grand.

Yes, immensely so. Specifically what he was likely to be reading or studying. Very specifically, would he have been able to get his mits on Plutarch's writings on women like:

So it is ridiculous to maintain that women have no participation in virtue. What need is there to discuss their prudence and intelligence, or their loyalty and justice, when many women have exhibited a daring and great-hearted courage which is truly masculine?

Sorry, biological determinism is my pet skeeve at the moment, and I run into the Erotikus almost by accident, and then I couldn't help thinking, goodness I wonder if Robespierre read that. From it's title it doesn't seem like the sort of book they'd be encouraging boys to read.

I'm not going to do anything as horrible as turn Robespierre into a teenage feminist, I was just thinking, well, was there a moment when the idea that humanity was mutable became real?

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

According to L.W.B. Brockliss, who along with Dominique Julia, seems to be the main scholar of secondary and higher education in late 18th century France, "In Greek most students would only have read extracts from Aesop, Lucian, Homer, and Demosthenes. The first was read in the lower classes (if texts were studied), Lucian in the third and second, and the last two in the rhetoric. If alternatives were used at all, the list would primarily have comprised the Greek New Testament (either the Gospels or Acts) for beginners, Xenophon's Cyropaedia in the second (an appropriate choice), and a speech by Isocrates in the rhetoric, usually the Ad Nicoclen. Lucian and Homer were always on the textual menu, the first generally studied through the Dialogue of the Dead, the latter through several books of the Iliad or Odyssey. [...] Above all, no one would have had the opportunity to read the Greek historians and dramatists, except occasionally the odd life of Plutarch (1).

(1) In 1727 Rollin claimed that exercises on Plutarch were common and one exists for the Coll. de Beauvais from 1712; Plutarch was also set on several occasions for the Paris agrégation and was definitely read at Sorrèze [...]" - Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History

In other words, if he read Plutarch in school at all, it would have been one of his lives. (And he almost certainly read all of them later, whether in Greek or in translation.) To answer the question of whether he could ever have read the Erotikus, I would say it depends on how good his Greek was and/or whether there was a translation available. We know he knew Greek, but students had to be much less proficient in it than Latin, so he might not have been at the level where doing extracurricular reading in Greek would be very enjoyable. Still, you never know.

In any case, Teenage Feminist!Robespierre would be some kind of superhero. An inaccurate one, but it amuses me none the less. XD;

[maelipstick.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Thank you for the prize list too.

In Greek most students would only have read extracts from Aesop, Lucian, Homer, and Demosthenes.

What no Plato? They didn't study Plato? Or am I getting this stupidly wrong?

In any case, Teenage Feminist!Robespierre would be some kind of superhero. An inaccurate one, but it amuses me none the less. XD

I realy like the idea of inaccurate superhero!Robespierre. Really, he could turn up mysteriously wherever acts of social injustice are taking place and fight the oppressors with his ninja-legal aid lawyer skills and superior reason. Or something, as long as he didn't have to run fast or shoot straight. He's even got the absent-minded cover-persona, the geeky glasses and the animal side-kick. Yes, yes, it is late, very late I should probably lie down, but why should the Royalists get all the inaccurate superhero fun?...sorry about that.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

Apparently not. At least, Brockliss doesn't mention him. Odd, isn't it?

That would be adorable. If I had more skill with that kind of thing, I would totally make a comic out of that.