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Fragments of Saint-Just's True Personality and Views of Women

  Saint-Just’s stoic and stern public persona is often discussed. However, many aspects of the revolutionary’s personality remain a mystery to historians. What is certain is that his personal and political relations, which were deeply intertwined, leave us with two likely very different presentations of Saint-Just. In his personal matters, many who knew him describe him as kind. This stoic persona that he created for himself politically likely masks the real individual. In fact, in his personal life, he diverged tremendously from antiquated understandings of many issues. For example, for a young man in Eighteenth Century France, he held relatively progressive views of women. There are few mentions of women in his Institutions draft, but it is just that- a draft. What Saint-Just was carrying in his coat pocket was likely far from finished. In his other works, Saint-Just expresses his sympathies for women more directly, but in his Republican Institutions manuscripts, he affirms...
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On John Keats

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 John Keats has long been one of my favorite poets, and I've read several books about his poetry, but also about his links with English radicals like Leigh Hunt and Percy Shelley. It's not in his written works that he expresses himself so ardently, but in his relationships with others that his pro-revolution views come to the foreground. However, as he came of age around the time of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, his British patriotism still shone through. It's debatable whether patriotism can be separated from nationalism, but for the surgeon-turned-poet, the revolution in France was seen in a positive light. He certainly felt that England should have made its own revolution long ago. Keats, like Rimbaud, has long reminded me of Saint-Just. John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821, aged 25. But their short lives are not the only thing they have in common. Like Keats, Saint-Just often referred to nature and medieval imagery in his surviving literary works. In his...
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Misrepresentations of Saint-Just's Character in Romantic Era Historical Accounts: The Importance of Humanizing Historical Figures

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 In a forthcoming article for a conference, I intend to address the two most important views of Saint-Just in the historiography of the Revolution as well as some of the misunderstandings of the politician's character. In this post, I want to discuss a bit the implications of Romantic-era historians' idealized portrayal of the young revolutionary, and how even those who view Saint-Just favorably can misinterpret his character. I highly recommend reading English historian Marisa Linton's work on confounded representations of Saint-Just and their foundations, as I found them extremely useful when researching this forthcoming article. Romantic interpretations of the revolutionary still greatly influence his portrayals in many circles, particularly online “fandom” circles, despite the many inaccuracies of this point of view. Where does this idealized representation of Saint-Just come from? Reviewing the works of the French historians Michelet and Lamartine help us to understand...
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