prerevolutionary

Perhaps the cause was the near-death accident in which his coach hung perilously over a bridge after the horses plunged over the parapet, or perhaps it was a moral reaction to the decadence of the dicing tables of prerevolutionary France—in any case, it revitalized his commitment to Jansenism, a strict Catholic cult, and he abandoned math for theology and philosophy.

This was part of a lifelong pattern of reticence, dating back to the prerevolutionary years in Virginia, when he had first emerged from the mists of the Blue Ridge Mountains to attend William and Mary, study law with George Wythe, and win marginal acceptance by the Tidewater elite.

Robert Darnton, acknowledged by Beckerman, has done a lifetime’s brilliant work on the sociability of prerevolutionary French writers.

But temporal tricks already abound: References to the Shah suggest prerevolutionary Iran, even as the settings — replete with gleaming phones and computers and cars — are contemporary.

Starting in prerevolutionary Russia, a new approach to theater insisted on truth — as opposed to eloquence, bravura or technical skill — as the highest value in acting.