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Browsing by Author "Summers, Kelly"

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    A cross-channel marriage in limbo: Alexandre d’Arblay, Frances Burney, and the risks of revolutionary migration
    (2020) Summers, Kelly
    In late 1801, as the prospect of a truce between Britain and France raised the hopes of émigrés throughout the French Revolutionary diaspora, Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard d’Arblay took a momentous gamble. After a decade abroad, he crossed the English Channel in the hopes of resurrecting his military career back home. It all went spectacularly wrong, and he, his wife—the English writer Frances Burney—and their son found themselves stranded in Napoleonic France after the collapse of the Peace of Amiens in 1803. Then as now, d’Arblay usually warrants mention as General Lafayette’s aide-de-camp or Burney’s trusted scribe. His status as an émigré had a undeniable impact on his famous wife’s later life and work, but d’Arblay’s fraught homecoming also provides a revealing window into the messy return and reintegration of those who left France during the Revolution. Their mass re-migration has been largely neglected in the otherwise flourishing field of émigré studies. What is more, as committed partners pursuing a new form of marriage—one based on affection and intellect rather than property or parentage—d’Arblay and Burney were forced to tackle the perils of bi-national marriage in the dawning age of nationalism and total war. While navigating competing loyalties and tenuous finances, the fate of their family hinged on contingencies like the Brumaire coup d’état; partisan patronage networks; and the proliferating demands of revolutionary bureaucracy and the Napoleonic “security state.” The Burney-d’Arblays’ recurrent reunions and separations offer firsthand insight into the dizzying upheavals of the 1790s and the complexities of political reconciliation that followed.
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    A cross-channel marriage in limbo: Alexandre d’Arblay, Frances Burney, and the risks of revolutionary migration
    (2020) Summers, Kelly
    In late 1801, as the prospect of a truce between Britain and France raised the hopes of émigrés throughout the French Revolutionary diaspora, Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard d’Arblay took a momentous gamble. After a decade abroad, he crossed the English Channel in the hopes of resurrecting his military career back home. It all went spectacularly wrong, and he, his wife—the English writer Frances Burney—and their son found themselves stranded in Napoleonic France after the collapse of the Peace of Amiens in 1803. Then as now, d’Arblay usually warrants mention as General Lafayette’s aide-de-camp or Burney’s trusted scribe. His status as an émigré had a undeniable impact on his famous wife’s later life and work, but d’Arblay’s fraught homecoming also provides a revealing window into the messy return and reintegration of those who left France during the Revolution. Their mass re-migration has been largely neglected in the otherwise flourishing field of émigré studies. What is more, as committed partners pursuing a new form of marriage—one based on affection and intellect rather than property or parentage— d’Arblay and Burney were forced to tackle the perils of bi-national marriage in the dawning age of nationalism and total war. While navigating competing loyalties and tenuous finances, the fate of their family hinged on contingencies like the Brumaire coup d’état; partisan patronage networks; and the proliferating demands of revolutionary bureaucracy and the Napoleonic “security state.” The Burney-d’Arblays’ recurrent reunions and separations offer firsthand insight into the dizzying upheavals of the 1790s and the complexities of political reconciliation that followed.
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    The historiographical afterlives of Maximilien Robespierre
    (2019) Jackson, Bailea; Summers, Kelly
    Based on the Independent Study I am completing, my presentation will explore how interpretations of the French Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre have varied across time and place. I attempt to tease out some of the connections between scholarly and popular interpretations and their respective historical and historiographical contexts.
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    A myth greater than Zeus: popular perceptions and scholarly realities about the French Revolutionary levée en masse
    (2024) Wild, Samuel; Summers, Kelly
    In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the Levée en Masse, or more accurately, its depiction in history. For years, the Levee has been used as a tool of propaganda and a supporting part of Marxist history on the French Revolution, creating a myth or legend of the Levée en Masse as a spontaneous and patriotic event where the men of France rushed to the republic's defence. However, this has changed as historians both inside and outside France have challenged the myth of the Levée, and by the late 1980s, this myth was only perpetuated by a dwindling number of Marxists. The issue is that this perception of the Levée en Masse has been defeated in academia; the myths of the Levée remain in the popular perception of history thanks to two hundred years of Marxist literature and French Propaganda. This presentation aims to identify and debunk the nationalist legend of the Levée en Masse that has distorted the Popular perception of this pivotal and complex historical event.
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    A myth greater than Zeus: popular perceptions and scholarly realities about the French Revolutionary levée en masse
    (2024) Wild, Samuel; Summers, Kelly
    In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the Levée en Masse, or more accurately, its depiction in history. For years, the Levee has been used as a tool of propaganda and a supporting part of Marxist history on the French Revolution, creating a myth or legend of the Levée en Masse as a spontaneous and patriotic event where the men of France rushed to the republic's defence. However, this has changed as historians both inside and outside France have challenged the myth of the Levée, and by the late 1980s, this myth was only perpetuated by a dwindling number of Marxists. The issue is that this perception of the Levée en Masse has been defeated in academia; the myths of the Levée remain in the popular perception of history thanks to two hundred years of Marxist literature and French Propaganda. This presentation aims to identify and debunk the nationalist legend of the Levée en Masse that has distorted the Popular perception of this pivotal and complex historical event.