The Destruction of the Bastile The Destruction of the Bastile The Destruction of the Bastile was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1789. The poem describes Coleridge's feelings of hopes for the French Revolution as a catalyst for political change. When the Bastille was overrun during the French Revolution and destroyed in July 1789, many political liberals within Britain celebrated. The schoolboy Coleridge, in particular, leaned towards radical views and would later become more and more radical although his views within "The Destruction of the Bastile" are more moderate. Although the poem was composed following the Bastille's destruction, it was not published until 1834. The
French Revolution and the English Gothic Novel of Caleb Williams a critic wrote, "Fancy is a faculty which we should not have expected to find in the brain of a philosopher who had struck his hand upon his heart and felt it stone; yet fancy Mr. Godwin possesses in no common degree." Godwin's use of the fantastic in the form of the gothic novel again let him write about the philosophy of the French revolution without receiving the harsh backlash, because it was under the guise of the fantastic. French Revolution and the English Gothic Novel The French Revolution influenced the English gothic novel. The gothic novel