Book contents
- The Psychology of Radical Social Change
- The Psychology of Radical Social Change
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Foreword
- 1 Toward a Psychology of Revolution
- Part I Roots of Revolution
- Part II Evolution and Involution in Social Transformations
- 6 Social Engineering and Its Discontents
- 7 Political Plasticity and Revolution
- 8 The Velvet Revolution of Land and Minds
- 9 Wordsworth's Insurgency
- 10 Between the Guillotine and the Velvet Revolution
- Part III Representations of and in Revolution
- Index
- References
9 - Wordsworth's Insurgency
Living the French Revolution
from Part II - Evolution and Involution in Social Transformations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2018
By
Book contents
- The Psychology of Radical Social Change
- The Psychology of Radical Social Change
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Foreword
- 1 Toward a Psychology of Revolution
- Part I Roots of Revolution
- Part II Evolution and Involution in Social Transformations
- 6 Social Engineering and Its Discontents
- 7 Political Plasticity and Revolution
- 8 The Velvet Revolution of Land and Minds
- 9 Wordsworth's Insurgency
- 10 Between the Guillotine and the Velvet Revolution
- Part III Representations of and in Revolution
- Index
- References
Summary
William Wordsworth’s experienced a crisis in early life that inspired a long pamphlet in defense of the French Revolution, entitled ‘A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff . . . By a Republican’. Wordsworth’s ‘Letter’ is untypical in numerous respects, not least its hostility towards a prominent figure in the Anglican church, Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, who in the 1770s expressed sympathy for the American Revolution and became a respected liberal spokesman on issues of the day. Watson was one among many who, in the 1780s, welcomed the French Revolution but who, in early 1793, was so shocked by the execution of Louis XVI as to renounce all sympathy with it. In contrast, Wordsworth was ‘radicalized’ by the news of regicide and the purges (or ‘the terror’), defending the right to use extreme violence in his ‘letter’ to consolidate revolutionary gains. This chapter provides an illustrative example of an individual living through the French Revolution, and an analysis of the conditions leading to radicalization, such as perception of injustice and society’s failure to provide solutions to it, key factors motivating contemporary terrorists (Moghaddam, 2005). Only a few years passed before Wordsworth began to distrust revolution and become skeptical of republican ideology. Thus, Wordsworth’s life during the French Revolution shows the conditions leading to hardening of belief and support of extreme measures in times of radical social change.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Psychology of Radical Social ChangeFrom Rage to Revolution, pp. 159 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
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