| Summary: | <br/>Recent debates around the French Revolution have questioned the need for an overall paradigm of interpretation, as the certainties underpinning both ‘classic’ and ‘revisionist’ views have faded. In <em>Experiencing the French Revolution</em> authors argue against a single ‘paradigm quest’, in favour of a plurality of approaches to underscore the diverse ways in which the turbulent changes of late eighteenth-century France can be explored. <br/> From broad cultural trends to very personal trajectories, a team of experts offers fresh perspectives on the individual and collective experience of Revolution, both within and outside France. Using a range of methodologies, including biographical studies of key individuals and groups, archival studies of structures and institutions, and new sources available from digital humanities archives, contributors provide: <br/> • new insights into the clandestine book trade of pre-revolutionary France, and the surprising effectiveness of Louis XVI’s state control<br/> • a reappraisal of Robespierre, whose opinions were shaped and transformed by years of upheaval<br/> • an exploration of how revolutionary situations inspired both dissent and discipline within the new citizen armies<br/> • an analysis of the revolutionary shockwaves felt beyond France, and how its currents were exploited for national political ends in Belgium, England and Wales. <br/><br/> David Andress, Introduction: Revolutionary historiography, adrift or at large? The paradigmatic quest versus the exploration of experience.<br/> I. Experiencing Revolutionary transitions<br/> Simon Burrows, French banned books in international perspective, 1770-1789<br/> Charles Walton, Between trust and terror: patriotic giving in Revolutionary France<br/> Peter McPhee, Robespierre and violence<br/> Mette Harder, Reacting to revolution – the political career(s) of J.-L. Tallien<br/> Ian Germani, ‘The most striking and the most terrible examples’: the experience of military justice in the armies of the French Revolution<br/> II. Experiences at the heart of the Terror<br/> Alex Fairfax-Cholmeley, Defence, collaboration, counter-attack: the role and exploitation of the printed word by victims of the Terror, 1793-1794<br/> Jonathan Smyth, Public experience of the revolution: the national reaction to the proclamation of the Fête de l’Etre Suprême<br/> Ronen Steinberg, Trauma before trauma: imagining the effects of the Terror in the Revolutionary era<br/> Marisa Linton, The stuff of nightmares: plots, assassinations and duplicity in the mental world of the Jacobin leaders, 1793-1794 <br/> III. Revolutionary experiences beyond France<br/> Brecht Deseure, ‘Rappelez-leur, pour mieux les persuader’: French political legitimation and historical discourse in Belgium (1792-1799) <br/> Ffion Jones, ‘The silly expressions of French revolution…’: the experience of the Dissenting community in south-west Wales, 1797<br/> J. Ward Regan, Thomas Paine: life during wartime <br/> Summaries<br/> Bibliography<br/> Index<br/> <br/><br/> 'An outstanding group of scholars at the cutting edge of current work on the seminal political upheaval of modern history demonstrates that attempts to reinvent overarching orthodoxies will always falter in the face of fresh empirical research.'<br/> William Doyle, University of Bristol<br/>
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