ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to describe the canon of French novels from the Revolutionary decade while offering a new theoretical and methodological approach to the reading of those texts. The early phase, 1790–1792, is marked by an initial taking stock followed by an optimistic engagement with the changes that the Revolution was causing in society. The extent to which the novels of the initial, optimistic phase of the Revolution endorse the constitutional monarchy perhaps also reflects booksellers' worries about the viability of texts espousing extremes. The period 1792–1794 is marked by the increasing rarity of moderate literary engagement with the Revolution. The apparent continuity of Ancien Regime tropes, settings and characters is in fact an indication of certain authors' traumatized response to the Revolution. The chapter extends Deborah Jenson's view that 'the origins of French Romanticism are linked to the traumatic memory of the Revolution'.
