A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution
eBook - PDF

A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution

The Abbe Sieyes and What is the Third Estate?

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution

The Abbe Sieyes and What is the Third Estate?

About this book

What Is the Third Estate? was the most influential pamphlet of 1789. It did much to set the French Revolution on a radically democratic course. It also launched its author, the Abbé Sieyes, on a remarkable political career that spanned the entire revolutionary decade. Sieyes both opened the revolution by authoring the National Assembly's declaration of sovereignty in June of 1789 and closed it in 1799 by engineering Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état.
This book studies the powerful rhetoric of the great pamphlet and the brilliant but enigmatic thought of its author. William H. Sewell's insightful analysis reveals the fundamental role played by the new discourse of political economy in Sieyes's thought and uncovers the strategies by which this gifted rhetorician gained the assent of his intended readers—educated and prosperous bourgeois who felt excluded by the nobility in the hierarchical social order of the old regime. He also probes the contradictions and incoherencies of the pamphlet's highly polished text to reveal fissures that reach to the core of Sieyes's thought—and to the core of the revolutionary project itself.
Combining techniques of intellectual history and literary analysis with a deep understanding of French social and political history, Sewell not only fashions an illuminating portrait of a crucial political document, but outlines a fresh perspective on the history of revolutionary political culture.

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Yes, you can access A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution by William H Sewell Jr. in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & French History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Editor's Introduction
  3. Preface
  4. Chapter 1. Introduction
  5. Chapter 2. What Is the Third Estate?
  6. Chapter 3. Political Economy, Social Contract, and Representation: The Foundations of Sieyes's Political Thought
  7. Chapter 4. What Is Privilege? A Rhetoric of Amnesia
  8. Chapter 5. What Is the Citizen? The Denial of Political Equality
  9. Chapter 6. An Uncontrollable Revolution
  10. Epilogue: The Paradoxical History of Sieyes's Rhetorical Devices
  11. Bibliography
  12. Index