French Historians In The Nineteenth Century

This study is a reflection on the major historians of nineteenth-century France, and shows that, near the end of the century, a major change of perspective occurred. The historians discussed in the opening sections of the book looked to the past for guidance, while modern historians from the twentieth-century onwards regard the past as a closed book which the historian has to open. Guizot is the hero of the first section of the book; in part two, Comtesse d’Agoult (Daniel Stern) is specifically mentioned, partly because she, who wrote a splendid history of the revolution of 1848, tends to be ignored as a historian while Michelet and Tocqueville are still discussed. The historians in part three are transitional figures who politically and morally still belong to the nineteenth-century, but whose histories show the new approach to the past.

French Historians 1900-2000: The New Historical Writing inTwentieth-Century France examines the lives and writings of 40of France’s great twentieth-century historians. Blends biography with critical analysis of major works, placingthe work of the French historians in the context of their lifestories Includes contributions from over 30 international scholars Provides English-speaking readers with a new insight into thekey French historians of the last century

This is a vivid portrait of the French historical profession in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, concluding just before the emergence of the famous Annales school of historians. It places the profession in its social, academic, and political context and shows that historians of the period have been unfairly maligned as amateurish and primitive in comparison to their more celebrated successors. Pim den Boer begins by sketching the contours of French historiography in the nineteenth century, examining the quantity of historical writing, its subject matter, and who wrote it. He traces the growing influence of professional historians. He shows the increasing involvement of the national government in historical studies, paying special attention to the impact of political factions, ranging from ultraroyalists to radical republicans. He explores how historical research and teaching changed at schools and universities. And he shows how nineteenth-century historians' keen understanding of the past and of historical methodology laid the foundations for historiography in the twentieth century. archives, including official documents, confidential reports, and personal letters. Den Boer makes use of statistical, biographical, and methodological analysis and demonstrates comprehensive knowledge of both minor historians and leading scholars, including Charles Seignobos and Charles-Victor Langlois. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

France has long attracted the attention of many of America's most accomplished historians. The field of French history has been vastly influential in American thought, both within the academy and beyond, regardless of France's standing among U.S. political and cultural elites. Even though other countries, from Britain to China, may have had a greater impact on American history, none has exerted quite the same hold on the American historical imagination, particularly in the post-1945 era. To gain a fresh perspective on this passionate relationship, Laura Lee Downs and Stéphane Gerson commissioned a diverse array of historians to write autobiographical essays in which they explore their intellectual, political, and personal engagements with France and its past. In addition to the essays, Why France? includes a lengthy introduction by the editors and an afterword by one of France's most distinguished historians, Roger Chartier. Taken together, these essays provide a rich and thought-provoking portrait of France, the Franco-American relationship, and a half-century of American intellectual life, viewed through the lens of the best scholarship on France.

Jules Michelet, one of France’s most influential historians and a founder of modern historical practice, was a passionate viewer and relentless interpreter of the visual arts. In this book, Michèle Hannoosh examines the crucial role that art writing played in Michelet’s work and shows how it decisively influenced his theory of history and his view of the practice of the historian. The visual arts were at the very center of Michelet’s conception of historiography. He filled his private notes, public lectures, and printed books with discussions of artworks, which, for him, embodied the character of particular historical moments. Michelet believed that painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving bore witness to histories that frequently went untold; that they expressed key ideas standing behind events; and that they articulated concepts that would come to fruition only later. This groundbreaking reevaluation of Michelet’s approach to history elucidates how writing about art provided a model for the historian’s relation to, and interpretation of, the past, and thus for a new type of historiography—one that acknowledges and enacts the historian’s own implication in the history he or she tells.