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
Historiography of the French Revolution in general, claiming that it was "not the unfortunate by-product of revolution, [but] the source of its energy." Lynn Hunt, though often characterized as a feminist interpreter of the Revolution, is a historian working in the wake of the revisionists. Her major works include "Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution" (1984), and "The Family Romance of the French Revolution" (1992), both interpretative works. The former focuses on the creation of a new democratic political culture from scratch, assigning the Revolution's greatest meaning here, in a political culture. In the latter study she works with a somewhat Freudian interpretation,