revolution, or the killing fields of Cambodia. The Volcano The rhetoric of violence in the French revolution was heavily influenced by the tendency to turn to the phenomena of the natural world in order to describe and explain the changes in society. In a world of rapid political and cultural changes, prominent figures in the Revolution actively used certain linguistic tools in order to create a political language that resonated with the public. Many of them were also familiar with the developing scientific areas of natural history, either through a developed interest or the pursuit of a career in the natural sciences. Consequently, natural imagery became the means of both ‘imagining and explaining revolution’. In this manner, the metaphor of the volcano flourished in the revolutionary imagination. Initially, the volcano symbolised ‘unbridled force and destruction, but a destruction that could work against France as well for it’. However, as the Revolution progressed, so did the image of the volcano and its significance for human advancement. From being a source of potential destruction and catastrophe, the volcano later symbolised a ‘constructive revolutionary transformation’ during the Reign of Terror. As the political situation again shifted, the image of the volcano eventually returned to its status as a force of unrelenting power. The changing symbolic meanings of the volcano in themselves present the Revolution as a source of unpredictable and inevitable destruction that lay beyond human control. However, given the animosity of the French people, their rising political dissatisfaction and restlessness, even the metaphor of a scorching volcano paled. Even metaphors drawn from the furious glory of nature failed to describe the ferocity of a nation and its people scorned. This metaphorical transformation is reflected in genres across the literary spectrum, including the birth and increasing popularity of the novel as a form of expression. These vivid comparisons between social transformation and natural catastrophe were not uncommon. Writing twenty years before the 1787 Assembly of Notables, the political philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau emphasised seismic activity, such as volcanic tremors, blasts and pyroclastic surges, as a key force behind the spread of early human civilisation. According to his Second Discourse, not only did natural disasters drive communities closer together, strengthening their bonds of cooperation, but they also enabled such communities to witness the power of combustion as an essential resource for the eventual production of working tools. Rousseau’s optimistic vision of naturalised change, of