We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The Sacred Names of the Nation's Dead: War and Remembrance in Revolutionary France.
- Authors
Clarke, Joseph
- Abstract
In the apparent absence of any of the war memorials that have come to characterise the twentieth century's conflicts, most historians of collective memory have assumed that the dead of earlier wars went unremembered and remained unmourned. By uncovering some of the places where ordinary French men and women remembered their war dead in 1793 and 1794, this essay questions that assumption. From the unveiling of a cenotaph to the erection of a plaque in memory of a local casualty of war, the memory of the Revolution's war dead was stamped on the very fabric of towns and villages throughout France during the Revolution's most radical phase, the Terror. Few of these war memorials survived the ending of the Terror. And yet, however ephemeral they proved to be, their very existence raises questions concerning our understanding of the links between war and remembrance in the pre-industrial age and suggests that that the 'modern' culture of commemoration may not be quite as modern as historians assume.
- Subjects
FRANCE; WAR memorials; WAR casualties; REPATRIATION of war dead; FRENCH Revolution, 1789-1799; FRENCH revolutionary literature; ANNIVERSARIES
- Publication
At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries, 2010, Vol 71, p21
- ISSN
1570-7113
- Publication type
Essay