The political upheavals of the French Revolution and the violent reaction against it by all of Europe's threatened monarchies shattered the illusion that change would be peaceful. Historical events had to be interpreted and reinterpreted as rapidly as they occurred. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, enlightened intellectuals relished the fall of the Bastille, a symbol of the power of kings and aristocrats to have ordinary people imprisoned on a personal whim or for …showed first 75 words of 496 total…

…showed last 75 words of 496 total…public was changing; overturning the confidence the eighteenth-century "men of letters" had in their social role. New segments of society pressed for literacy or for representation in the press, giving rise to a demand for new forms of popular literature, including romance and gothic novels. Moreover, radical demands that politics include all the people, peasants and laborers as well as businessmen and aristocrats, challenged even the most enlightened writers' sense of their task and purpose.