Laura Mason

The “Bosom of Proof”: Criminal Justice and the Renewal of Oral Culture during the French Revolution*

Just days into the most widely publicized trial of the Directory, the conspiracy trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals, lead defender Pierre-Francois Real stopped the examination of the first witness to demand that stenographers cease transcribing testimony. The stenographers, whose presence in a revolutionary courtroom was unprecedented, had been working steadily since the prosecutors’ opening statements. “Citizens,” Real interrupted, “the law contains a very important passage. Article 352 states that: ‘. . . the witness will testify orally and his deposition may not be written.’” Invoking arguments made at the beginning of the French Revolution, when the Constituent Assembly created the criminal jury and established the conditions under which it would function, Real warned, “The law insists that the system of written depositions not be restored in any way. That system will undoubtedly return if any means are used to save testimony given orally.”1 Real’s opponent, prosecutor Rene Viellart, denied that a courtroom transcript would vitiate the oral quality of the trial. Looking across the channel, toward the jury that had served as the constituents’ model, he argued: “In England . . . where, as well, the founding principle of the jury is that testimony be heard orally[,] . . . there are stenographers to record witnesses’ statements. Here is the account of the trial of my lord Preston and Sir Acton[,] . . . printed by order of the Constituent Assembly when it wanted to establish the jury in France. And look! . . . We see statements, the questioning of witnesses, the responses of the accused.”2 This exchange was resolved in the short term by the court’s decision to

Looking at a life: Biography on film

Abstract Two contemporary biographical films, Crumb and Thirty‐Two Short Films About Glenn Gould suggest new possibilities for reconceiving the genre of biography in a post‐literate society, revealing how visual media may enhance scholarship and storytelling in biography and history alike. In Crumb, director Terry Zwigoff tries to sustain a rigid narrative that tells a rather predictable story about the life of cartoonist R. Crumb. However, even as Zwigoff works to replicate the apparently seamless narrative of a written history, his camera records evidence that subverts it. Consequently, he allows viewers to raise questions about the ‘truth’ of his account and to construct alternate scenarios of Crumbs life. With Thirty‐Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, director Francois Girard explodes the biographical genre by abandoning a single, linear narrative in favor of thirty‐two vignettes, and by intermingling documentary and fictive film‐making. These cinematic techniques are motivated by Glenn Goulds philo...