“The large ideas that influence intellectual and aesthetic movements are...first introduced into the community of writers and artists through philosophy. Philosophical texts codify the definitions and the boundaries for the concepts that have influenced Western thought, art, science, and politics since the days of Plato and Aristotle…” -Art Berman, Preface to Modernism.
John Merriman’s Dynamite Club succeeds in a portrayal of the decadence and injustice of a fin-de-siècle Parisian society of bourgeois capitalists, which fueled the expansion of anarchist ideology and even dyed its destructive creed with tints of virtue and righteousness. However, an apparent infatuation with vindication of the brilliant Émile Henry and the terrorists of the so-called ‘Dynamite Club’ –which he intelligently achieves through overemphasis on the grueling socioeconomic conditions that staged the advent of this terrorism– leads him to disregard an account of the philosophical framework that grounded this specific form of anarchism at this specific time in history. As such, a variety of questions remain fundamentally unanswered. From where –other than purely irrational vengeance– did the anarchist morality ‘of the deed’, which legitimized the killing of innocents, acquire intellectual authority and appeal? Why did anarchism preach the absolute destruction of the capitalist state instead of merely its restructuration? How did the obsession on a post-state utopia acquire relevance amongst an intellectual class?
The following paper attempts a solution, in echo of Art Berman’s introductory words, what can be called a ‘genealogy of the anarchy of the Dynamite Club of fin de siècle France,’ through an exploration of the intellectual sources for their moral...
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...p.: n.p., 1846. N. pag. Print.
• Berman, Art. Preface to Modernism. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1994. Print.
• Călinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke UP, 1987. Print.
• Grier, Michelle. "Kant's Critique of Metaphysics." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 29 Feb. 2004. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
• Klein, Richard J. Literature and Revolution. Vol. No. 39. N.p.: Yale French Studies, 1967. Print.
• Leighten, Patricia. "The World Turned Upside Down: Modernism and Anarchist Strategies of Inversion in L'Assiete Au Beuvre." The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies. 2nd ed. Vol. 4. N.p.: Penn State UP, 2014. N. pag. Print.
• Merriman, John M. The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print.
In his book Twelve Who Ruled, Palmer eloquently writes this narrative, "weaving the biographies of the twelve into the history of their time," and provides a coherent and convincing explanation of the terror. The book is not only educational for someone interested in the time period when these twelve men ruled the nation of France, but it is also enjoyable from the perspective of a person reading the book solely for interest in revolutions and how they affect the people who are involved in them. The book deals with a brief period of time during the French Revolution, namely the year of terror. The book ventures to interpret the foundations and rationale for the terror and Palmer illustrates his speculations on the subject through gracious, flowing writing.
In this essay I shall try to find whether the Terror was inherent from the French revolutions outset or was it the product of exceptional circumstances. The French revolution is the dividing line between the Ancien Regime and the modern world. After France the hierarchy that societies of the time had been founded on began to change and they began to sweep away the intricate political structures of absolute monarchy, but however to achieve this was the Terror absolutely necessary? And was it planned/ or was it just the extraordinary circumstances, which the French had lead themselves into once they had deposed of Louis the sixteenth. Whatever way it is looked at, the political ideology of the rest of the world was going to change after the French revolution. The conflicting ideology's of the French revolution from socialism to nationalism would now be mainstream words and spearhead many political parties in years to come. The French revolution had been in high hopes that a peaceful transition could be made from absolutist to parliamentary monarchy, but what went wrong? Surely the terror could not have been in their minds at this time? Surely it was not inherent from the start.
Andress, David. The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005
Weber, Eugen. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1976. Print.
Modernism was the word of the era because it was the opposite of the last. People pined for new and exciting ways to make up for time lost to the war. This feeling of looking ahead through the ambiguity of the time permeated through all tiers of society from the working class to the elites. In Judith Walkowitz’s “A Jewish Night Out,” we find a dance hall catering to Jewish youth. One can rent a dance partner and learn how to dance well. It was suddenly important to be able to charm the opposite sex in talent, attitude, and appearance because sex wasn’t just for procreation anymore. Deborah Cohen’s Household Gods, she gives a look into architecture and material things. There’s a clear clash between the older and younger generations, and the younger ones enjoy modernism. “Advocates of the modern insisted that the new era required a new style. They deplored the vogue for reproductions, which, in the psychological language of the day, they analysed as evidence of an ‘inferiority complex’.” As well, stream of consciousness writing emerges from the depths of collegiate, middle class bohemia. The Bloomsburry Group were named after the London neighborhood they inhabited and were an artist collective, living life according to art and the new fragmentation of life after war. Virginia Woolf’s writing reflects the general feeling of the interwar period: confusing, ambiguous, hopeful, and moral-less. The Bohemians took the disassociation of the era and put it into new and modern art. All of these cultural ideas and forms of recreation were a result of the Great War because there was a generation of young people who were lost and needed a future meaningful to them, so they created
Modernism can be defined through the literary works of early independent 20th century writers. Modernism is exp...
This paper will be separated into two portions, the first of which deals with the first dependent factor leading up the rush for arms—the economic crisis in France, the old regime, fiscal reformations, the National Assembly, and the effects all three had on the third estate, or bourgeoisie. The second portion will be dedicated to more immediate cause of the war—the Estates-General, and what that event means in reference to the rise ...
Avant-garde is a term referred to works or concepts that are experimental and 'cutting-edge' concepts (Avant-garde:2014). In the purpose of this study, Cezanné was part of early 20th-century art world’s avant-garde known as Impressionism. Clement Greenberg (1909: 755), identifies Kant as the first philosopher to describe Modernism as a self-critical tendency as he was the first to criticize criticism in itself. A modernist is said to be seen as a kind of critic, who criticizes according to a specific set of values and ideas about the development of art, thus a modernist is not necessarily seen as a kind of artist (Harrison 1996:147).According to Greenberg, Modernism self-criticizes itself differently when compared to the Enlightenment as the Enlightenment criticizes from the outside whereas Modernism does so from the inside (Greenberg 1909:755).
Modernism is defined in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as "a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression." While this explanation does relate what modernism means, the intricacies of the term go much deeper. Modernism began around 1890 and waned around 1922. Virginia Wolf once wrote, "In or about December, 1910, human character changed." (Hurt and Wilkie 1443). D.H. Lawrence wrote a similar statement about 1915: "It was 1915 the old world ended." (Hurt and Wilkie 1444). The importance of the exact dates of the Modernist period are not so relevant as the fact that new ideas were implemented in the era. Ideas that had never before been approached in the world of literature suddenly began emerging in the works of many great authors. Two of the pioneer Modernist writers were Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot. The tendencies to question the incontestable beliefs embedded in all thinking and to focus on the inner self dominated. Old viewpoints were tossed aside to make way for the discovery of modern man's personal spirituality. Two works that are considered important forbears in the Modern period are T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Oxford Art Online. “Neo-classicism & The French Revolution”. Oxford University Press. Web. 5th May 2013.
The Revolution in France, during the 19th century, gave power to the people for the first time in France. French citizens now had faith that they could form a strong, independent country; but what they did not realize was that there must be some form of financial or monetary backbone present for a country to excel on its own in the modern world. This gave way to the rise of capitalism and all its follies, debaucheries, and mainly the exploitive nature it excites in people. Two authors, who were writing and observing these changes during this time in France, Honore de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert, exemplify the demoralization of a people caused by the onslaught of capitalism, especially concerning the influence of this exploitive system as it stains everyday life with its deceptive characteristics. Through evaluating Balzac’s Pere Goriot and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, it is evident that the exploitive aspects of capitalism permeate not only through the lives of a spectrum of characters, but also throughout the government as it exploits its country’s citizens.
Gottschalk, Lous Reichental and James T. Shotwell. The Era of the French Revolution (1715-1815). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929. Print.
Modernism began as a movement in that late 19th, early 20th centuries. Artists started to feel restricted by the styles and conventions of the Renaissance period. Thusly came the dawn of Modernism in many different forms, ranging from Impressionism to Cubism.
Although we considerably live in a ‘post-modern’ world, many of the technologies and principles involved in designing and engineering them are draw influence from the innovative culture of the modern era. This essay aims to explore the contextual ideas behind the modern movement, how it influenced today’s artists and thinkers, how ‘Modernization, Modernity, Modernism’ shaped the world we live in.
At the start of the revolution, in 1789, France’s class system changed dramatically (Giddens, 2014). Aristocrats lost wealth and status, while those who were at the bottom of the social ladder, rose in positions. The rise of sociology involved the unorthodox views regarding society and man which were once relevant during the Enlightenment (Nisbet, 2014). Medievalism in France during the eighteenth century was still prevalent in its “legal structures, powerful guilds, in its communes, in the Church, in universities, and in the patriarchal family” (Nisbet, 2014). Philosophers of that time’s had an objective to attempt to eliminate the natural law theory of society (Nisbet, 2014). The preferred outcome was a coherent order in which the mobility of individuals would be unrestricted by the autonomous state (French Revolution). According to Karl Marx, economic status is extremely important for social change. The peasants felt the excess decadence of the ancient regime was at the expense of their basic standards of living, thus fuelling Marx’s idea of class based revolutions and the transition of society (Katz, 2014). This can be observed, for example, in novels such as Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a novel that had a role for mobilizing the attitudes of the