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4. Is there anything left to discover about the crowd in the French Revolution? Can we contribute to the issues raised by Rudé, Soboul, and Andrews over the last 30 years? Is the crowd a new topic for representation in late eighteenth-century France, and if so, why is that important?
 
question 4 Warren Roberts, 6-9-03, 9:54 AM
RE: question 4 Jack Censer, 6-12-03, 4:46 PM
    what can we learn about the crowd Lynn Hunt, 6-23-03, 11:04 PM
RE: what can we learn about the crowd Barbara Day-Hickman, 7-15-2003,
12:58 PM
RE: what can we learn about the crowd Jack Censer, 7-17-2003, 10:18 AM
Response to Jack Warren Roberts,
7-21-03, 8:03 AM
Responses to Barbara Warren Roberts,
7-19-03, 10:31 AM

RE: Response to Warren and Final Remarks Barbara Day-Hickman,
7-25-03, 1:14 PM

Response to Barbara Warren Roberts, 7-28-03, 10:33 AM

Subject: Response to Barbara
Posted By: Warren Roberts
Date Posted: 7-28-03, 10:33 AM

There is much that I agree with in Barbara’s fine and perceptive reading of Prieur’s Bertier de Sauvigny image. I agree with her and Lynn when they say that trained, skilled illustrators, such as Prieur, muted crowd violence, in comparison to illustrators who did cheap and what one might call more popular images of revolutionary crowds in action. For Prieur, muting of crowd violence was necessary, I suspect, given the cost of Tableaux historiques prints and the audience for which they were intended. The question of disengagement seems to me to be more problematic, insofar as Prieur’s Bertier image is concerned. Yes, Prieur has brought out the ritualistic dimension of the procession, but not to see Foulon’s head stuck on a pike with straw stuffed in its mouth as macabre is to pass over something that seems obvious to me. That head is not only central to the image compositionally but defines what it is about. This strikes me as macabre. As for the religious statuary behind the head of Foulon, is there ironic contrast, as I suggest, or is there religious endorsement of the event, as Barbara suggests? Did Prieur set the procession against the background of the church of Saint Merry and its religious statuary to express religious endorsement of the crowd’s murder of its enemies, which included decapitation and evisceration of dead bodies? Not, I should think, in any direct way. I still see an ironic contrast between the crowd and its trophy in the foreground and the church of Saint Merry in the background. And I continue to be struck between the contrast between Prieur’s two images, those depicting Foulon’s hanging and a crowd escorting Bertier de Sauvigny to the Place de Grève. The contrast between these images is the work of a skilled artist, not only technically but also in the dramatization of popular violence.
 
 
 
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