La révision par la fiction Le roman historique contemporain et la Révolution française

While evoking the fate of the royal family (C. Thomas, F. Chandernagor, Ch. Donner), the French contemporary historical novel focuses on the most tragic side of the Revolution. It stages both individual characters caught up in turmoil as well as massacres, genocide and zealotry of which the Revolution is the principal matrix (H. Monteilhet, G. Guillaume, É. Fontenaille, Ch. Bigot, P. Bordage). Such an approach could be construed as a literary symptom of our own questioning of the foundation of modernity.