Revisit Napoleon in Fact and Fiction

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From Napoleon impersonators, caricature and ballads, to a play which asks what if he didn't die in exile - presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by actor and director Kathryn Hunter, biographer Michael Broers, historians Oskar Cox Jensen and Laura O'Brien and journalist Nabila Ramdani who looks at how Napoleon is viewed in 21st century France

Michael Broers has published the second instalment of his biography which is called Napoleon The Spirit of The Age. Oskar Cox Jensen has published Napoleon and British Song. Laura O'Brien has published The Republican Line: Caricature and French Republican Identity

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.1	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:36.5	The 15th of August was the day when Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica
0:40.5	as the fourth child of a family he described as more Italian or Tuscan than Corsican.
0:46.2	In this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast,
0:49.0	Anne McElvoy considers both his biography and the way he's been represented in culture.
0:54.5	Hello!
1:22.6	Thank you. The opening bars of Beethoven's Third Symphony, a work that the composer originally dedicated to Napoleon. He saw him as an embodiment of the democratic ideals of the French Revolution, only to revise
1:28.7	both his opinion and the dedication when Bonaparte declared himself Emperor in 1804.
1:36.2	Nearly 200 years after his death, Napoleon remains a figure who captures the popular imagination.
1:42.6	He's been portrayed as both a hero and a villain in history books,
1:46.7	in popular songs, plays, films and caricatures.
1:51.3	Over the next 45 minutes,
1:53.2	my guests and I will hold many of these representations up to the light.
1:57.2	We want to discern what they can tell us about Bonaparte himself and the ways in which
2:02.5	he's been reimagined by different generations. I'm joined by the historians Michael Brewer's,
2:08.4	Laura O'Brien and Oscar Cox Jensen, the journalist Nabila Ramdani and theatre director, Catherine Hunter.
2:15.1	Welcome to you all and I would like to begin if I could by getting a snapshot of the different, perhaps contradictory aspects of Napoleon.
2:23.4	So could I ask you to suggest three words that describe Bonaparte as you see him?
2:30.4	Laura, I'm going to start with iconic, legendary and mediated.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.