Abstract

Unlike Tocqueville's other writing, Recollections, which was never intended for publication, contained the internally contrary, multiple viewpoints characteristic of carnivalesque discourse. Its greater spontaneity may allow'us more easily to see some of the ways in which writing can undermine the intentions of the writer. In following the Recollections' treatment of the February revolution, the writing soberly sets out to embody the story of a deadly struggle between the bourgeoisie and the people over the issue of property but steadily veers off in the direction first of irony, then satire, and finally carnival. Tocqueville's rhetorical ending shows him trying to turn his unruly text back into a cautionary tale of the moralistically ironic type. But the text keeps getting out of hand and dissolves moralism in a bath of satire and burlesque