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" Receiving revolution : "
Jackson, Owen David
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1093953
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| Doc. No
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TLets310657
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| Main Entry
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Jackson, Owen David
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| Title & Author
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Receiving revolution :\ Jackson, Owen David
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| College
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University of Bristol
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| Date
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2000
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| student score
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2000
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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Through a close reading of Bristol newspapers this thesis considers the intrusion ofrevolutionary idioms into the English language. This was a far more hesitant andnuanced process than the 'logocide' argued for by Burke whose notion of a 'linguisticterror' is overly dramatic. In adopting a longer term perspective and considering therevolutionary examples of 1830 and 1848, the violence of Burke's model is replacedby a more nuanced understanding of the range of idiomatic choices presented toBritish politics by the French experience.A brief introductory section addresses key historiographical and methodologicalissues. Chapter one explores the development of revolutionary reporting in the Bristolnewspapers between 1792 and 1848. The first half of the chapter examines the subtlecombination of idioms and rhetorical devices evident in the five Bristol titles for1792. Reports on French and British affairs operated within a consciously circulardiscourse founded on the interchangeability of 'signified' and 'referent'. In this waythe revolutionary example was fictionalised, demonised and emptied of any politicalvalue. The second half of the chapter then focuses on the decline of this discursiveloyalism over the period to 1848.Later chapters concentrate upon the trajectory of specific terms into British politicaldiscourse. Chapter two addresses two inter-related questions. Firstly, how did thepolarised discursive structure identified in chapter one incorporate examples ofBritish interaction with, and sympathy for, revolutionary France? Secondly, how didthe revolutionary notion of fraternite interact with, and influence, existing Britishidioms of inclusion and exclusion?Chapter three explores the revolutionary signifier, egalite, and the associated conceptsof democracy, meritocracy, socialism and communism. Finally, chapter fourexamines the interplay of an egalitarian, revolutionary liberte with older Britishconceptions of liberty, liberties, privilege, property, and patriarchy. In examining theinterplay of liberte and egalite with analogous British terms both chapters suggestthat by 1848 British political discourse owed more to the French paradigm than theeditors of the Bristol press cared to admit
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Bristol
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French revolution
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| Added Entry
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University of Bristol
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