Book Reviews
This volume is the proceedings of a colloquium at the University of Regina in 1996 honouring the career of the Canadian historian of revolutionary France, James A. Leith. Such Festschriften are notoriously unfocused, collecting as they often do disparate essays whose only commonality is the authors’ connection to the scholar being honoured. In this case, however, the twenty-three essays are not only of high quality but address interlocking themes.
Ever since his pioneering monograph on The Idea of Art as Propaganda in France 1750-1799, published in 1969, Leith has been well-known for his vast knowledge and lucid analysis of cultural forms in the French Revolution, particularly visual imagery. Since then, of course, the study of cultural forms has become one of the central and most innovative areas of both social and intellectual history. Leith’s mission has been to convince historians that visual material should be understood as texts with the same status as written evidence, that an informed “reading” of the rich iconography of the French Revolution takes us well beyond its use as simply illustrative.
Those who went to Regina in homage to Leith agree, and present us here with a rich array of examples: there are some insightful, engaging analyses of individual painters and artworks, of architectural projects, even of French coins during the transition from monarchy to republic in 1792-93. Others, like Leith has elsewhere, investigate parallel uses of visual representation in the Chinese, English and Russian revolutions, as well as later French revolutions. The contributions range in time and place from the role of the liturgy in the Enlightenment in Bavaria to the use of the colour red in the Chinese Revolution. The latter, by Diana Lary, is one of the best essays in the volume, together with Beryl Williams on Bolshevik appropriations of Jacobin imagery, Rolf Reichardt on popular prints in the French Revolution and Raymond Jonas on counter-revolution, particularly in churches consecrated to the Sacred Heart after the année terrible of 1870-71.
One of the highlights of the volume is Leith’s own contribution, which ranges from some very funny recollections of his Calvinist upbringing in Toronto to reflections on the attempts of French revolutionary régimes to mould a new citizenry through cultural policy. As Leith admits, he has long been criticised for having allegedly overstated the propagandist intent of revolutionary cultural policies, to the extent of describing it as “totalitarian”. He is unrepentant here.
Whatever one’s reaction to his position, however, this is a most satisfying collection, richly illustrated and mostly in accessible prose. Undergraduates as well as teachers will find instruction and pleasure in this volume.
