The Memoirs of Toussaint and Isaac Louverture
The Memoirs of Toussaint and Isaac Louverture

Author: Arthur F. Saint-Aubin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2015-07-15

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1611461960

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the memoir of Toussaint Louverture—a former slave, general in the French army, and leader of the Haitian Revolution—and the memoir of his son, Isaac. The Revolution and its leaders have been studied and written about extensively. Until recently (2004), however, the memoir of Toussaint has received little attention—and only as a historical document. This is the first study that explores the 1802 work foremost as a literary text, a creative production that deploys the techniques of fiction and drama to make truth claims about the past; moreover, this is the first book-length study of Isaac Louverture’s memoir. The two texts are read as examples of how black men thought of themselves as “men” (citizens) and, therefore, how they expressed their masculinity, at that historical moment, as experiences of mourning and loss. This study builds upon three areas of scholarship: the tradition of memoir writing; historicist readings of Toussaint’s memoir; and descriptions and theories of men and masculinity within the black Atlantic. The study distinguishes itself in ways that will make it of interest to more than just historians: in addition to using the intersection of race and masculinity as an analytical tool, it speaks to the nature of literary creativity and it draws from studies examining the relationship between history, memory, and fiction. As a result, scholars and students in literary and cultural criticism, as well as those in gender and diasporic studies, will also find this study of interest and value.

Nietzsche and Napoleon
Nietzsche and Napoleon

Author: Don Dombowsky

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2014-09-15

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1783160977

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book argues that Nietzsche's political thought and his own proposed model of governance is Bonapartist in conception: autocratic will in the guise of popular rule. Bonaparte is the model for the Nietzschean commander; not only his virtu, his ethics of martial valour, but his political institutions and techniques of power. Nietzsche understood that Napoleon manipulated the democratic process, abandoned the concept of popular sovereignty and undermined the principle of equality, that he was opposed to parliamentary politics but maintained their simulacra, a manoeuvre Nietzsche admired in respect of tactics. Nietzsche desired a revaluation of all values which endorsed many features of the Bonapartist regime. One can see Nietzsche not merely situated in the Napoleonic historiography of the cult of personality, but also situated ideologically in terms of a Napoleonic political policy and theory of government, in so far as he affirms certain political structures of the Napoleonic Empire. Nietzsche moves beyond the Napoleonic cult of personality to an analysis of the underlying structures of the Napoleonic empire. Nietzsche admires the 'artist of government' Napoleon (Napoleonic Caesarism) not only for his force of will but also for his political policies and tactics or political techniques. Contents Introduction: The Dionysian Conspiracy 1. Sources, Cults and Criticism: Nietzsche’s Portrait of Napoleon 1.) In the Gilded Orbit of the ‘Ideal Artists’ 2.) Nietzsche’s Napoleon: Against Thomas Carlyle’s Cult of the Hero 3.) Nietzsche’s Napoleon: A Polemic 4.) The Artist of Government 2. Aristocratic Radicalism as a Species of Bonapartism 1.) From Character-type to Structure 2.) Nietzsche’s Understanding of Bonapartism 3.) Nietzsche and the Underlying Structures of the Bonapartist Empire (1799–1815) 4.) Aristocratic Radicalism 3. Napoleon III: ‘déshonneur’ 1.) Caesarism 2.) Nietzsche and the Underlying Structures of the Second Empire (1851–1870) 3.) Nietzsche’s Rejection of Napoleon III 4.) Nietzsche’s Immanent Critique of Bonapartism 5.) Nietzsche’s Radical Bonapartist Alliance Conclusion: The Imperial European Future

Myth and Menagerie
Myth and Menagerie

Author: Katie Hornstein

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0300253206

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An innovative examination of encounters between humans and lions and representations of these charismatic animals in the visual culture of postrevolutionary France In artistic traditions that stretch back to antiquity, lions have been associated with strength and authority. The figure of the lion in nineteenth-century France stood at a crossroads between these historical meanings and contemporary developments that recast the animal's significance, such as the literal presence of lions in public menageries. In this highly original study, Katie Hornstein explores the relationships among animals, spectatorship, and visual production. She examines the fascinating encounters between artists, viewers, and lions that took place--in menageries and circuses, on canvases, and on the pages of books--and out of which, she argues, new perceptions of power, empire, and the natural world emerged. Myth and Menagerie considers a range of visual objects, bringing into dialogue photographs of circus animals, hunting manuals, and zoo guidebooks with sculptures, drawings, and paintings by artists such as Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, Édouard Manet, and Rosa Bonheur. Illuminating the lives of individual lions against the backdrop of societal change and colonial expansion, Hornstein constructs a fresh theoretical framework for thinking about animals as more than symbols or passive subjects and for acknowledging a history in which both humans and animals had a stake.

Citizen Emperor
Citizen Emperor

Author: Philip Dwyer

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-11-26

Total Pages: 817

ISBN-13: 0300190662

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this second volume of Philip Dwyer’s authoritative biography on one of history’s most enthralling leaders, Napoleon, now 30, takes his position as head of the French state after the 1799 coup. Dwyer explores the young leader’s reign, complete with mistakes, wrong turns, and pitfalls, and reveals the great lengths to which Napoleon goes in the effort to fashion his image as legitimate and patriarchal ruler of the new nation. Concealing his defeats, exaggerating his victories, never hesitating to blame others for his own failings, Napoleon is ruthless in his ambition for power. Following Napoleon from Paris to his successful campaigns in Italy and Austria, to the disastrous invasion of Russia, and finally to the war against the Sixth Coalition that would end his reign in Europe, the book looks not only at these events but at the character of the man behind them. Dwyer reveals Napoleon’s darker sides—his brooding obsessions and propensity for violence—as well as his passionate nature: his loves, his ability to inspire, and his capacity for realizing his visionary ideas. In an insightful analysis of Napoleon as one of the first truly modern politicians, the author discusses how the persuasive and forward-thinking leader skillfully fashioned the image of himself that persists in legends that surround him to this day.

Napoleon Against Himself
Napoleon Against Himself

Author: Avner Falk

Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)

Published: 2015-08-01

Total Pages: 651

ISBN-13: 1939578728

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although Napoleon Bonaparte has been a favorite subject of biographers for nearly two centuries, to date no full-scale psychobiography of arguably the most compelling, fascinating, and complex leader in world history has ever been published. With Napoleon Against Himself, internationally recognized scholar Avner Falk fills this void. He not only considers Napoleon's intellect but also what use he made of it, how it affected his emotional life, and whether he used intellectualization as one of his unconscious defensive processes. Additionally, he examines Napoleon's ambivalent relationship with his mother, his identification with the &“Motherland,&” and his fits of narcissistic rage, violence, and aggression. Specifically, Falk focuses on his numerous irrational, self-defeating, and self-destructive actions. In weaving in the psychological interpretations that have previously been proposed for Napoleon's actions with his own new insights, Falk has created a most stimulating and original work that sheds much needed light on Napoleon's troubled inner world.