المؤلفون: Joyce Appleby

المصدر: The William and Mary Quarterly. 28:267

مصطلحات موضوعية: Cultural Studies, History, media_common.quotation_subject, Censorship, Enlightenment, Context (language use), Toleration, Politics, Economy, Declaration of independence, Monarchy, State (polity), Political science, Law, media_common

الوصف: HE American Revolution created a sentimental bond between the new American nation and French reformers who saw in American events a confirmation of their own ideas. With the philosophy of the Enlightenment they could lift the American Revolution out of its provincial context, and the American Revolution in turn invested their discursive thought with a reality it had not known before. Because the FrancoAmerican alliance protected the publication of American works from the customary ban on foreign political writings, French reformers were able to make the first real breach in government censorship. Several European periodicals catered to the demand for news of America, and translations of the American state constitutions circulated widely.' After the Declaration of Independence one French writer after another took up his pen to analyze the significance of the American Revolution, debating small points of American political forms as matters that impinged on his deepest commitments. "Not a book on America was printed between I775 and I790 but ended with a sort of homily," Bernard Fay observed.2 The obvious need for changes in the superannuated Bourbon monarchy had turned many prominent Frenchmen into reformers. Outwardly they were working for specific goals-penal reform, abolition of slavery, religious toleration, freedom of the press-but implicitly their activity suggested the need for the liberalization of French public life. Able men were eager to apply the knowledge of their enlightened age to the prob

URL الوصول: https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::01212839c1f3ca67bc9e9bbcf9766592
https://doi.org/10.2307/1917311