The Human Tradition in Modern France

Edited by K. Steven Vincent, Alison Klairmont-Lingo

Publication date:

01 October 2000

Length of book:

214 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780842028042

The Human Tradition in Modern France gives a human perspective of the history of France from 1789 to the present, revealed in essays that highlight individuals and intriguing events that too often have been lost under labels and statistics. Students will gain an understanding of the humor and passion in French history from these new, original essays by well-established scholars. This collection also relates the individuals, events, and controversies to current historiographical debates. The Human Tradition in Modern France is an excellent supplementary text for courses on French history and is also useful for courses in world history and Western Civilization.

Introduction
Part I: 1789–1815
Chapter 1: Voices from the Streets in the French Revolution
Chapter 2: Death in the Bathtub: Charlotte Corday and Jean-Paul Marat
Chapter 3: The Chénier Brothers and Jacques-Louis David: Artists in the French Revolution
Part II: 1815–1870
Chapter 4: Victor Jacquemont in India: Travel, Identity, and the French Generation of 1820
Chapter 5: Désirée Véret or the Past Recaptured: Love, Memory, and Socialism
Part III: 1870–1914
Chapter 6: Vacher the Ripper of the Southwest
Chapter 7: Authority, Revolution, and Work: Views from the Socialist Left in the Fin de Siècle
Chapter 8: Family and Nation in Belle-Epoque France: The Debate over Léon Blum's Du Mariage
Chapter 9: Notorious Women Speak for Themselves: French Actresses in the Nineteenth Century
Part IV: 1940–Present
Chapter 10: "The Oldest Negro in Paris": A Postcolonial Encounter
Chapter 11: Régis Debray: Republican in a Democratic Age
Chapter 12: The Business of Pleasure: Creating Club Méditerranée, 1950–1970
Suggested Readings

The editors and authors of this useful volume are aware of the added dimensions and insights that the scholarship of our day has contributed to our understanding of the complex French past since 1789. But they understand that bloodless categories are not enough and that live men and women made that history. The collaborators are bent here on restoring the human dimension to selected segments of the French past, and the reader of these pages will find lively vignettes of revolutionists, reformers, artists, actresses, colonialists, entrepreneurs, and others. A thoughtful introduction provides the political and social context, and a valuable bibliography concludes it.