Sense and sensibility : Mary Wollstonecraft as Active Witness to History
Disciplines
Article
English
ID: <
10.4000/episteme.633>
·
DOI: <
10.4000/episteme.633>
This article aims to show that in A Vindication of the Rights of Men Mary Wollstonecraft redefines historical practice by turning satire into a mode of historical cognition. Satire is here understood as a form of aesthetic sublimation of the violence inherent in polemical discourse. Wollstonecraft thus seeks to delegitimize Edmund Burke’s rendition of the French Revolution and, beyond, Burke himself as a historian, notably by feminizing him while presenting herself as an active witness to history.