Paris and Its Revolutionary Ideas: A Guide to French Culture and the Capital

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Paris and Its Revolutionary Ideas: A Guide to French Culture and the Capital takes readers on an innovative journey by inviting them to reconsider the term revolution. Rather than exploring historical narratives about bayonets and bricks, LaLonde argues that revolutions take place in minds and hearts through exposure to the arts. Turning to architecture, art, and literature populating and depicting Paris, the book explores ten revolutionary ideas that have promoted a greater sense of dignity for humankind and the natural environment.

These ideas are investigated in the Louvre, the Pantheon, the Orsay Museum, the Quai Branly Museum, and the Natural History Museum, among other Parisian sites. Turning to writers such as Montaigne, Rousseau, Stael, Fanon, and Le Clezio, the text highlights notions from tolerance to a social contract and an ecological renaissance. These writers lived through equally tumultuous times. Amidst dystopias, they envisioned utopias and built cathedrals of hope in Paris and beyond. Their enlightened ideas are relevant and inspiring as we build societies on the solid foundation of dignity.

Groundbreaking and unique, Paris and Its Revolutionary Ideas is an ideal text for students and researchers of French culture.