Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions

by Lloyd S. Kramer

Lloyd Kramer offers a new interpretation of the cultural and political significance of the career of the Marquis de Lafayette, which spanned the American Revolution, the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1830, and the Polish Uprising of 1830-31. Moving beyond traditional biography, Kramer traces the wide-ranging influence of Lafayette's public and personal life, including his contributions to the emergence of nationalist ideologies in Europe and America, his extensive connections with liberal political theorists, and his close friendships with prominent writers, many of them women. Kramer places Lafayette on the cusp of the two worlds of America and France, politics and literature, the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement, public affairs and private life, revolution and nationalism, and men and women. He argues that Lafayette's experiences reveal how public figures can symbolize the aspirations of a society as a whole, and he stresses Lafayette's important role in a cultural network of contemporaries that included Germaine de Stael, Benjamin Constant, Frances Wright, James Fenimore Cooper, and Alexis de Tocqueville. History/Biography

Genres: History

368 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

Reviews

[S · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating perspective of how Lafayette fit into the larger political and social cultures of his time; and not only how he was shaped by them, but how he shaped them in return. It's the only perspective I've read that suggests that his importance in modern history lies not so much in the tangible military and political events he took part in, but how he participated, via his hundreds of friendships, in wider circles of intellectuals, writers, feminists, and revolutionaries from all over the world - not just in America or France; and how he served as a cultural exchange-point for different nations, different ideas, and different political factions.

It also provides valuable insight into the history of human rights and how the liberal ideas of today were formed in their infancy in the era encompassing Lafayette's life and career - an era when the idea of people having rights at all was new and vulnerable. Activists often differed on their ideas of what "human rights" included, and whether or not these rights were inherent and inalienable, or merely useful and preferable. Lafayette himself was not an original political theorist (although he befriended many), but he nevertheless fit into this important strain of history by becoming a consistent advocate of human rights, and a symbol of courage for revolutionaries and oppressed masses everywhere; and one comes to the conclusion, upon finishing this book, that his five decades of highly-visible advocacy lent some legitimacy to a fledgling human rights movement that was finding its beginnings in Europe - a movement which continues on a global scale today.