Severed Heads and Martyred Souls: Crime and Capital Punishment in French Romantic Literature

The introduction provides background information on the contributions of 18th-century writers to early 19th-century thought on the death penalty. The body of the dissertation investigates Romantic authors' common preoccupations with such issues as the psychology of prisoners, their judges, and the crowds at trials and executions; the necessity of expiation and the validity of society's vengeance against criminals; and the martyrdom of the condemned. A number of recurrent motifs in Romantic tales of death sentences are discussed, including the frequent use of the color red to evoke both past and future bloodshed; persistent foreshadowing that the protagonists' heads are doomed, which raises the question of human free will versus destiny; and references to the scheduled time of a past execution as a substitute for naming the bloody event itself. The conclusion treats some of the influences of early 19th-century texts on later works involving the death penalty, including the macabre short stories of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and the engaged writing of Albert Camus. Thus, the dissertation demonstrates that reflecting upon the 19th-century treatment of capital punishment is important to scholars' understanding both of literary movements and of the political thought of our own time.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

French

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Poulosky, Laura Jean

Contributors dc:contributor

• Talbot, Emile J.

• Literature, Romance

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3017185

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86258