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  • Chateaubriand, penser et écrire l'histoire
  • Jennifer Yee
Chateaubriand, penser et écrire l'histoire. Edited by Ivanna Rosi and Jean-Marie Roulin. (Le XIXe siècle en représentation(s)). Saint-Étienne: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne, 2009. 316 pp. Pb €21.00.

This volume, reuniting papers given at a two-part international conference, forms a coherent whole marred only by the absence of an index or translations for Latin quotations. Jean-Marie Roulin's helpful introduction situates Chateaubriand as both responding to and partly inspiring the new approach to history that had taken a central role by the 1820s. Whether one calls it 'histoire romantique' or 'histoire descriptive' (Cristina Cassina, p. 119), among the wellsprings of the new history was Chateaubriand's vivid imagination of the material detail of everyday life, along with a characteristic sensitivity to 'l'archaïsme' that rejected neoclassical modernization (Piero Toffano, p. 133). The new attitude to history is also observed by Béatrice Didier, who analyses Chateaubriand's attempts at elaborating a history of literature and art in terms of periods rather than mere biography. Of the changing nature of history, and of its [End Page 102] new professionalization, Chateaubriand was himself a self-conscious commentator. His claims to be a 'serious' historian are, however, generally greeted with disparagement, a view reiterated here by Patrizio Tucci, who, unsurprisingly, reassures us that he was nevertheless a great artist; most of the contributors prefer to see him as a writer of memoirs rather than as a historian. Colin Smethurst, however, argues for a need to distinguish Chateaubriand's use of history for its legendary qualities, and the emotion with which it can imbue political commentary, from his real contributions to 'l'histoire-historienne' (p. 152), and Ivanna Rosi distinguishes 'un moi "historien", un moi "historique" et un moi "historicisé"' (p. 300). Several contributions offer focused studies of intertexts, from the use of ancient historical writers to contemporary secondary sources, notably Gibbon and Tocqueville, as well as Chateaubriand's reworkings of his own writings, with Jean-Claude Berchet offering an overview of his use of historical documentation. Chateaubriand was, of course, profoundly concerned by the problems of transition from one historical age to another. Tucci observes that, in trying to make sense of the Revolution through which he lived as a young man, Chateaubriand hesitated between two types of causality: he reasoned both that the Revolution was inevitable and that it was the fault of the philosophers. Meanwhile, as Françoise MéloWo shows, if the fall of Rome is evoked as a parallel with the Revolution and the end of the ancien régime, problems arise in accounting for the simultaneity of the decline of Rome and the rise of Christianity, since the latter ought naturally to be synonymous with progress. Some of these tensions concerning the nature of historical transition are powerfully captured in various versions of the famous river metaphor, through which Chateaubriand sees the Revolution as a 'fleuve de sang' separating the old world from the new, or, in other passages, imagines himself as a swimmer at a point where the rivers of the two centuries meet. As late as 1826 Chateaubriand sees both Republicans and reactionaries as standing on the riverbanks hurling abuse rather than following the current of the century.

Jennifer Yee
Christ Church, Oxford
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