The Past in French History

The Past in French History PDF Author: Robert Gildea
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300067118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
This fascinating book examines how the past pervades French public life, how the French both commemorate their past triumphs, heroes, and martyrs and attempt to erase the more violent events in their history. The book surveys the ways that various political communities in France during the past two centuries have manufactured different versions of the past in order to define their identities and legitimate their goals. Beginning with a discussion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989, Robert Gildea moves backward in time to show how rival factions have used various elements of French political culture--from the grandeur of the ancien r�gime to Catholicism, Jacobinism, Anarchism, and Bonapartism--to further their ends. Gildea shows how proponents of revolution and counterrevolution, church and state, centralism and regionalism, and national identity and nationalism campaigned to achieve the widest possible acceptance of their own view of the past. He describes the continuing battle between Left and Right for association with national heroes such as Joan of Arc and Napoleon. He exposes the reworking of collective views of the past by political communities, in order to increase or recover political legitimacy. Written in clear and trenchant prose, the book offers a new perspective on French history and political culture.

The Past in French History

The Past in French History PDF Author: Robert Gildea
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300067118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Get Book Here

Book Description
This fascinating book examines how the past pervades French public life, how the French both commemorate their past triumphs, heroes, and martyrs and attempt to erase the more violent events in their history. The book surveys the ways that various political communities in France during the past two centuries have manufactured different versions of the past in order to define their identities and legitimate their goals. Beginning with a discussion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989, Robert Gildea moves backward in time to show how rival factions have used various elements of French political culture--from the grandeur of the ancien r�gime to Catholicism, Jacobinism, Anarchism, and Bonapartism--to further their ends. Gildea shows how proponents of revolution and counterrevolution, church and state, centralism and regionalism, and national identity and nationalism campaigned to achieve the widest possible acceptance of their own view of the past. He describes the continuing battle between Left and Right for association with national heroes such as Joan of Arc and Napoleon. He exposes the reworking of collective views of the past by political communities, in order to increase or recover political legitimacy. Written in clear and trenchant prose, the book offers a new perspective on French history and political culture.

Paris To the Past

Paris To the Past PDF Author: Ina Caro
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393343154
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
“I’d rather go to France with Ina Caro than with Henry Adams or Henry James.”—Newsweek In one of the most inventive travel books in years, Ina Caro invites readers on twenty-five one-day train trips that depart from Paris and transport us back through seven hundred years of French history. Whether taking us to Orléans to evoke the visions of Joan of Arc or to the Place de la Concorde to witness the beheading of Marie Antoinette, Caro animates history with her lush descriptions of architectural splendors and tales of court intrigue. “[An] enchanting travelogue” (Publishers Weekly), Paris to the Past has become one of the classic guidebooks of our time.

Savoring the Past

Savoring the Past PDF Author: Barbara Ketcham Wheaton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439143730
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Wheaton effortlessly brings to life the history of the French kitchen and table. In this masterful and charming book, food historian Barbara Ketcham Wheaton takes the reader on a cultural and gastronomical tour of France, from its medieval age to the pre-Revolutionary era using a delightful combination of personal correspondence, historical anecdotes, and journal entries.

Realms of Memory: Traditions

Realms of Memory: Traditions PDF Author: Pierre Nora
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231106344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 618

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Book Description
Offers the best essays from the acclaimed collection originally published in French. This monumental work examines how and why events and figures become a part of a people's collective memory, how rewriting history can forge new paradigms of cultural identity, and how the meaning attached to an event can become as significant as the event itself.

France in the World

France in the World PDF Author: Patrick Boucheron
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590519418
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 993

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Book Description
This dynamic collection presents a new way of writing national and global histories while developing our understanding of France in the world through short, provocative essays that range from prehistoric frescoes to Coco Chanel to the terrorist attacks of 2015. Bringing together an impressive group of established and up-and-coming historians, this bestselling history conceives of France not as a fixed, rooted entity, but instead as a place and an idea in flux, moving beyond all borders and frontiers, shaped by exchanges and mixtures. Presented in chronological order from 34,000 BC to 2015, each chapter covers a significant year from its own particular angle--the marriage of a Viking leader to a Carolingian princess proposed by Charles the Fat in 882, the Persian embassy's reception at the court of Louis XIV in 1715, the Chilean coup d'état against President Salvador Allende in 1973 that mobilized a generation of French left-wing activists. France in the World combines the intellectual rigor of an academic work with the liveliness and readability of popular history. With a brand-new preface aimed at an international audience, this English-language edition will be an essential resource for Francophiles and scholars alike.

Past Imperfect

Past Imperfect PDF Author: Tony Judt
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520086500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
The uniquely prominent role of French intellectuals in European cultural and political life following World War II is the focus of Tony Judt's newest book. He analyzes this intellectual community's most divisive conflicts: how to respond to the promise and the betrayal of Communism and how to sustain a commitment to radical ideals when confronting the hypocrisy in Stalin's Soviet Union, in the new Eastern European Communist states, and in France itself. Judt shows why this was an all-consuming moral dilemma to a generation of French men and women, how their responses were conditioned by war and occupation, and how post-war political choices have come to sit uneasily on the conscience of later generations of French intellectuals. Judt's analysis extends beyond the writings of fashionable "Existentialist" personalities such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir to include a wide intellectual community of Catholic philosophers, non-aligned journalists, literary critics and poets, Communist and non-Communist alike. Judt treats the intellectual dilemmas of the postwar years as an unfinished history. French intellectuals have not fully come to terms with the gnawing sense of what Judt calls the "moral irresponsibility" of those years. The result, he suggests, is a legacy of bad faith and confusion that has damaged France's cultural standing, notably in newly liberated Eastern Europe, and which reflects the nation's larger difficulty in confronting its own ambivalent past.

The Old Regime and the Revolution

The Old Regime and the Revolution PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description


The Presence of the Past in French Art, 1870-1905

The Presence of the Past in French Art, 1870-1905 PDF Author: Richard Thomson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300257106
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This innovative book introduces a vivid new reading of French art and society at a crucial period of history The study of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French art tends to focus on a search for the modern. Richard Thomson presents an innovative approach to a popular period of art history, instead investigating how art in early Third Republic France adapted styles from the past. The classical is the predominant theme, punctuated by other stylistic currents, notably the Rubensian and the Botticellian. It asks, how did these styles--all three derived from foreign art--come to be adapted into French visual culture? How did the Republic customise classicism to its ideological ends? How was classicism manipulated by progressive painters for radical and reactionary readings? The Presence of the Past in French Art 1870-1905​ considers artists of very different character and type--from Degas to Henner, Cézanne to Besnard, Roty to Seurat, Dalou to Maillol--as well as a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, medals and celebrity photographs, to open up new vistas of interpretation in this fascinating field.

Contesting the French Revolution

Contesting the French Revolution PDF Author: Paul R. Hanson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405160837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Contesting the French Revolution provides an insightful overview of one of history’s most significant events, as well as examining the most significant historiographical debates about this period. Explores the causes, events, and consequences of the French Revolution Offers a stimulating analysis of the most controversial debates: Were the events of 1789 a social revolution or a political accident? Did they mark the rise of industrial capitalism or the birth of modern democracy? Was Napoleon Bonaparte an heir to the ideals of 1789 or a betrayer of the Revolution? Shows how historical interpretation of the French Revolution has been influenced by the changing political and social currents of the last 200 years – from the Russian Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall – and how historical study has shifted from a political focus to social and cultural approaches in more recent years.

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong PDF Author: Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402230575
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
"Sixty Million Frenchmen does its job marvelously well. After reading it, you may still think the French are arrogant, aloof, and high-handed, but you will know why." --Wall Street Journal