SoC 3:1

Influence of the French Revolution on 19th Century Literature

 

B efore the French revolution the citizens of France lived in a confined society with no freedom of speech nor freedom to express their feelings. The Government of the time imposed very strong and unfair laws on the common people. They felt this necessary in order to produce a stable Government with a strong economy and a strong sense of individuality within their citizens.

In general, the literature of any country is affected by how the citizens live. At this period in time the people in France were divided into the privilaged and the un-privilaged classes. The Eighteen-century writers focused on the lives of the upper class. The literature of the day was, like the people, highly restrained.

The French Revolution gave the common people more freedom to writers of the time, the citizens of the day and sent a strong wave of creativity. This, in turn, lead to new laws for the citizens which included a newer, less imposing literary standard.

According to Webster's Dictionary "Romanticism" is defined at a literary moment (as in the early 19th century Europe). Thompson defines "Romanticism" as "a major literary and cultural movement" that was inspired by the inner feelings, imagination and emotions of the great Romantics.

There are many direct relationships on how the French Revolution influenced the French Romanticism that followed in the Ninenteenth-century. The French Revolution (date 1798) divides the pre-Romanticism era from the fully blossoming new culture. Romanticism commences in approximately 1774 but does not really take off until the last decade of the 18th-century, the same time as the Revolution.

The following great Romanticism authors are an example of the best of their era. Hugo, the greatest poet of the 19th century France, Vigney who played a major role in the Romantic revolution in the 1820's with his excellent play Chatterton, Joseph de Maistre was "inspired to write by the divine greatness of the Revolution" and finally Lamartine who expressed his appreciation for nature as "reflections of his own moods" and who was one of the four greatest poets of the Romantic Movement.

C'est la vie.