The Societe de 1789 is used in this dissertation as a case study of the relationship of the Late Enlightenment to liberal monarchists of the early Revolutionary period. The club, founded in January of 1790, was composed of leading intellectuals, financiers, ancien regime bureaucrats and many liberal members of the National Assembly who sought to consolidate the gains of the Revolution in a new constitution which would reflect "political truths" as deduced by Enlightened philosophy. The High Enlightenment did not leave a particular political program or philosophy to be "implemented" by later reformers or revolutionaries. Rather the Enlightenment provided a context in which to debate political issues. The style and language used for the discussion of contemporary politics tells us more about the impact of the Enlightenment than would an attempt to trace ideas back to a "source." Thus, the analysis of the political language of the Societe de 1789 is an important element in determining the degree to which the Enlightenment influenced the club. A considerable portion of this work is devoted to the elaboration of computer-based linguistic methods applied to intellectual and cultural history. The theoretical and methodological issues raised by systematic analysis of textual data are considered in the context of analyzing the impact of Enlightenment and American Revolutionary discourses on the language of 1789. Although these methods may still be considered provisional, preliminary results presented here suggest that further development is warranted. The well-known failure of the Societe de 1789 as a political club to attract support and its failure to consolidate the gains of 1789 and stop the Revolution is also indicative of the relationship of the Late Enlightenment and Revolution. The contradictions of the Enlightenment's failure to develop a systematic political ideology is central to this failure. The Societe de 1789 never lost the Enlightenment fear of the people. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/7828 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Olsen, Mark V. |
| Contributors | Sydenham, M. J., |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 720 p. |
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