The Play of Terror in Nineteenth-Century France

This volume brings together seventeen studies that were originally presented as papers at the nineteenth annual Colloquium in Nineteenth-Century French Studies held at the University of Kansas in 1993. The contributors all consider one facet or another of the play of terror in nineteenth-century France.

In the wake of the French Revolution - and its most enduring image, that of the historical Terror - all aspects of life in France, both public and private, were to be fundamentally changed forever. Long-standing balances of power and authority had been upset, and new tensions had been created that would continue to play themselves out over the course of the following century.

In a number of cases, the focus of this volume is on the representation - literary, historical, or artistic - of the Terror itself, whether in novels such as Hugo's Quatrevingt-treize or Balzac's Une tenebreuse affaire, or in the art Salon of 1827-28. More often, however, contributors consider terror in its more general acceptation of fear or intense anxiety experienced in the face of violence, coercion, or intimidation.