Prize Contests in the Revolutionary Crucible

Abstract

This chapter examines the fate of the concours académique in the French Revolution. More specifically, it asks whether academic prize contests were able to keep pace with the evolving political culture and whether the practice remained a site of critical intellectual exchange the way it had been in the last decades of the Old Regime. The chapter first considers the state of the academies during the Revolution and notes the lack of dynamism in academic competitions after 1789. It then discusses the éloge contest held in honor of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, along with various prize contests organized by revolutionary bodies from 1790 to 1794. It also explores changes in the enlightened public sphere of the late eighteenth century due to political and intellectual illiberalism. It shows that, even though the National Convention abolished the academies and the concours académique in 1793, the French Revolution adopted the practice for itself but eliminated its pluralistic and critical elements.