What Is the Third Estate? was the most influential pamphlet of
1789. It did much to set the French Revolution on a radically
democratic course. It also launched its author, the Abbe Sieyes, on
a remarkable political career that spanned the entire revolutionary
decade. Sieyes both opened the revolution by authoring the National
Assembly's declaration of sovereignty in June of 1789 and closed it
in 1799 by engineering Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'etat.
This book studies the powerful rhetoric of the great pamphlet and
the brilliant but enigmatic thought of its author. William H.
Sewell's insightful analysis reveals the fundamental role played by
the new discourse of political economy in Sieyes's thought and
uncovers the strategies by which this gifted rhetorician gained the
assent of his intended readers--educated and prosperous bourgeois
who felt excluded by the nobility in the hierarchical social order
of the old regime. He also probes the contradictions and
incoherencies of the pamphlet's highly polished text to reveal
fissures that reach to the core of Sieyes's thought--and to the
core of the revolutionary project itself.
Combining techniques of intellectual history and literary analysis
with a deep understanding of French social and political history,
Sewell not only fashions an illuminating portrait of a crucial
political document, but outlines a fresh perspective on the history
of revolutionary political culture.
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