Research project for BEPE bounded to the project 'From Reims to Varennes: the languages of political authority in revolutionary France'

Abstract

This period of abroad research is a foreseen part of the research's project "From Reims to Varennes: the languages of political authority in revolutionary France", presented to Fapesp, in 2013. This research takes the political authority as a matter of linguistic authority. It is the distance from Reims to Varennes (the first being the land of the royal consecration and the last the place where Louis XVI and his family were caught in flight, provinding the title of the thesis), that constitutes the metaphor for the historical framework analyzed here, that is to say, the debate about the basis of authority in XVIIIth century and the competing political discourses that sought to provide principles for the composition of a new structure of authority. So, if we want to observe the dynamics of political authority in that period of crisis, we have to throw light on pamphlets, journals, administrative documents and public ones, though such documents may not be considered canonical works in political theory. In effect, the importance of this material is presented on the development of our central arguments, without which the interpretive hipothesis of the research could not be supported, it is to say, the political languages in using in the revolutionary discourses have a theoretical debt to the political arguments forged before the last ordination, in the Old Regime. (AU)