Overview

The French revolutionary shift from monarchical to popular sovereignty came clothed in a new political language, a significant part of which was a strange coupling of happiness and rights. In Old Regime ideology, Frenchmen were considered subjects who had no need of understanding why what was prescribed to them would be in the interest of their happiness. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen equipped the French with a list of inalienable rights and if society would respect those rights, the happiness of all would materialize. This volume explores the authors of fictional literature who contributed alongside pamphleteers, politicians, and philosophers to the establishment of this new political arena, filled with sometimes vague, yet insisting notions of happiness and rights. The shift from monarchical to popular sovereignty and the corollary transition from subjects to citizens culminated in the summer of 1789 but it was preceded by an immense piece of imaginative work.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jonas Ross Kjærgård
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.440kg
ISBN:  

9780367666415

ISBN 10:   0367666413
Pages:   222
Publication Date:   30 September 2020
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Table of Contents List of Figures Preface Introduction Happiness and the Politics of Words The Political Anthropology of Happiness and Rights Literature Chapter I: The Unfinished Declaration Debating the Declaration Nature and Society Rights and Duties Enmity and Passive Citizenship Literature Chapter II: What Was Literature? The Author-Politician and the Code of History Louis-Sébastien Mercier and the Re-Awakening of Patriotic Virtue Choderlos de Laclos’ Reinterpretation of Dulce et Utile Marie-Joseph Chénier and the Author-Legislator Literature Chapter III: Louis-Sébastien Mercier and the Dream of a Happy Future Temporality in Mercier’s Utopian Thought The Form of Government in L’an 2440 Taxation and the Duty of Patriotism Literature Chapter IV: The Search for Order in Choderlos de Laclos’ Liaisons dangereuses Laclos and the Politics of Social Forms The Rhythm of Social Forms The Hierarchies of Social Forms Literature Chapter V: The Regeneration of the State in Marie-Joseph Chénier’s Fénelon ou les religieuses de Cambrai Convent Life and Paternal Inflexibility The Problem of Humanness Political Agency : From Unhappiness to Happiness The Tableau Vivant: The Politics of the Happy Ending Literature Conclusion Literature Index

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Author Information

Jonas Ross Kjærgård, PhD, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University and recipient of the EliteResearch travel grant. He acquired his PhD degree at Aarhus University, Denmark, with a dissertation on French Revolutionary rights and literature. He has published articles and book chapters on literature and the French revolution and edited the volume Discursive Framings of Human Rights: Negotiating Agency and Victimhood (with Karen-Margrethe Simonsen), published by Birkbeck Law Press. He has begun a new research project on the literary history of the Haitian revolution.

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