The essays in this collection, drawn from a Hofstra University bicentennial conference on the French Revolution, seek to come to terms, often from conflicting points of view, with the complex relationship between events and their representations. The question 'How did the lived experience that eventually became known as the French Revolution come to be organized?' provides a common thread for the collection. Individual chapters examine the Revolution from the vantage points of theology and philosophy, theater and literature, as well as politics and history.

As the contributors show, the French Revolution was more than a series of political events that took place in one European country at the end of the 18th century. Instead, it was a trans-historical, multi-national, and multi-cultural discourse. It served as a point of reference by which and through which a complex of cultural values and styles could be defined, and as a model (even a negative model) for the elaboration of ideologies, and of political and administrative strategies for bureaucracies around the world. An invaluable collection for all students of the Revolution and its impact.