In this Book
- Philippe Aries and the Politics of French Cultural History
- Book
- 2004
- Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
summary
The author of Centuries of Childhood and other landmark historical works, Philippe Ariès (1914–1984) was a singular figure in French intellectual life. He was both a political reactionary and a path-breaking scholar, a sectarian royalist who supported the Vichy regime and a founder of the new cultural history—popularly known as l’histoire des mentalités—that developed in the decades following World War II. In this book, Patrick H. Hutton explores the relationship between Ariès’s life and thought and evaluates his contribution to modern historiography, in France and abroad.
According to Hutton, the originality of Ariès’s work and the power of his appeal derived from the way he drew together the two strands of his own intellectual life: his enduring ties to the old cultural order valued by the right-wing Action Française, and a newfound appreciation for the methodology of the leftist Annales school of historians. A demographer by training, he pioneered a new route into the history of private life that eventually won him a wide readership and in late life an appointment to the faculty of the prestigious École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. At the same time, he fashioned himself as a man of letters in the intellectual tradition of the Action Française and became a perspicacious journalist as well as a stimulating writer of autobiographical memoirs. In Hutton’s view, this helps explain why, more than any other historian, Philippe Ariès left his personal signature on his scholarship.
Table of Contents
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- Chronology of the Life of Philippe Ari
- pp. xxi-xxv
- 1. From Tradition into History
- pp. 1-18
- 3. The Politics of a Young Royalist
- pp. 37-56
- 4. Royalist Politics after the War
- pp. 57-75
- 7. Of Death and Destiny: The Ari
- pp. 113-128
- 10. A Time in History
- pp. 165-186
- Bibliography
- pp. 223-237
Additional Information
ISBN
9781613761144
Related ISBN(s)
9781558494350
MARC Record
OCLC
607384892
Pages
304
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No