Abstract
The idea of a sudden historical break predominates in the political imagination of the French Revolution. This break is often seen as a sort of biological revolution, an idealised renewal of human nature through political action. The main illustration of this is the appeal for the regeneration of man, to be heard on many lips. The symbols of a crumbling «barbaric feudalism » are replaced by those of a new world which has brought forth the regenerated Frenchman. Here we attempt to see how — at what moment, in response to which events, in relation to which themes and following which paths — this myth of the «new man » was constructed (or reconstructed) during 1789.
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