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LECTURE: THE SHADOW OF THE BASTILLE
Prise de la Bastille, by Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houel
Thursday 19 November 2009
The second in the series of lectures on the prison in Victorian literature, run in conjunction with the University's Dickens Journals Online project, was given by Professor Andrew Sanders (Durham), the author of the Shorter Oxford History of English Literature. It was entitled "The shadow of the Bastille", and Professor Sanders described it as a Tale of One City: Paris.
Professor Sanders showed, with the help of numerous slides, how Paris was seen by Dickens and his British contemporaries as a city of blood, constantly engaged in violent revolution. The Bastille was already regarded in Britain as a symbol of French royal totalitarianism before its fall in 1789. By then it was scarcely a real prison, since only fourteen elderly men were released, but it enabled the British to congratulate themselves on having habeas corpus, which meant there could never be an equivalent here.
Professor Sanders discussed Dickens' treatment of the French Revolution in A Tale Of Two Cities, and the later popularisation of the story through the play The Only Way. He showed how Dickens borrowed some ideas from The Count of Monte Cristo (Dr Manette mixing soot with his own blood to make ink in the Bastille) and altered reality where necessary (a condemned man like Charles Darnay would not have been in solitary confinement). He also argued that Dickens tried to show how revolution only makes things worse, and how forgiveness achieves more.
The next lecture in the series, "Doing time with Dickens" by Dr Tony Williams, will be on 1 December in the Old Gaol.
Report by the Web Team
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