Emotions, Terror and Politics in the French Revolution

​​​​​​The Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, led by Prof. Ute Frevert, cordially invites all interested to attend its summer semester 2021 colloquium:

Marisa Linton, Kingston University (UK)

Emotions, Terror and Politics in the French Revolution

Revolutions are profoundly emotional events, both for the people who take part, and for those who oppose them. Yet it is only in recent years that historians have begun to acknowledge the extent to which the Revolution's leaders were subject to strong emotions. To trace the influence of these emotions on political decision-making we need to acknowledge the interconnectedness of reason and emotion, to appreciate that both these forces act in concert. There are many difficulties involved in studying revolutionary emotions, many of which relate either to the shortage of source material, or to the related problem of how to interpret such sources as we have. Marisa Linton will focus on the emotion of fear, and explore how the fears to which revolutionary leaders were themselves subject, influenced the decisions that led to a policy of terror during the critical period of 1793 to 1794, a period often defined as that of 'the Terror', with a definitive article and capital letter.

​Marisa Linton is a historian of the French Revolution and the French Enlightenment. Amongst her many publications she is the author of: Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship and Authenticity in the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2013), which explores the impact of emotions amongst the French Revolution's leaders, and how men, who started out as humanitarian idealists, came to 'choose terror'.

Her latest book: Terreur! La Révolution française face à ses demons (Armand Colin, 2020), co-written with Professor Michel Biard, is a rethinking of the French revolutionary terror; an English-language edition is forthcoming in 2021 with Polity Press. She is Professor Emerita in History at Kingston University, UK.

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