The work of the writer-Historian, particularly his memoirs, accompanies the transition from the rhetoric of the Enlightenment to the register of the ego and the lived experience. Does it integrate into the young historiographical school of the 1820s ?
Behind a somewhat bland title, weakened echo of the “ Evidence of history From François Hartog, hides a study full of acuity of the various forms of writing in history practiced by Chateaubriand. Coming from a thesis, Jacob Lachat’s book focuses on aesthetic and epistemological solutions adopted successively by this author to think about the inscription of his being in history and to give meaning to the past, of his Essay on revolutions (1797) to the “ Testamentary preface »Who prelude to Memoirs from beyond the grave (1832).
Choice of writing
This last work undoubtedly dominates excessively, usually, the idea that one has of the conception of the history and the modalities of its writing in Chateaubriand. The essential contribution of Jacob Lachat’s work is to expand the apprehension of this author’s relationship to history and to locate it in relation to the historiographical renewal of his time.
If each of the works of the corpus considered has been able to give rise to work considering the way in which a thought of history was forged there, it did not yet exist, to my knowledge, which highlighted the stages of evolution connecting and differentiating these various works, from one end of the career of the writer. The work of Jacob Lachat is therefore precious by the point of view he constructs, by the way in which he highlights interactions with the epistemological and editorial context of the post -revolutionary period, and because it leads us to perceive differently the work in which the singularity of the writer is most strongly affirmed in his relationship to history, his Memoirs.
Jacob Lachat organizes his words in a chronological way, in six chapters corresponding to slices of his corpus. He only takes into account the works directly related to historian writing, leaving the novels aside and only approaching the laterally the Genius of Christianity. THE Memoirs from beyond the grave are discussed as terminus ad quem, But remain out of scope, except to define the reasons for the historiographical reorientation which is affirmed there. As a result, the Rancid lifeultimate work, is also rejected out of the study limits of the study, mentioned only in the conclusion as a simple echo of the choice of writing operated in Memoirs.
The chronological approach is enriched by the choice to center each chapter on a crucial question for the writing period considered, as well as on the link with an epistemological and variable political context. Thus the first chapter builds a very interesting reflection on the form of “ painting ” – Related to the concept of” period ” -, in which in the eyes of Jacob Lachat is materialized, the historiographical heritage of the young author.
L’Essay on revolutions associated here with Genius (Treaty, as we have said, more peripherally) gives rise to analyzes that return to those of Olivier Ritz in Natural metaphors while inflecting the interpretations of his predecessor. Jacob Lachat insists less on the ambition of tackling history in a scientific way than on the displacement that Chateaubriand of the Rhetoric of Enlightenment operates to the lived experience register. The painting therefore seems to him oriented by “ an effort of subjectivation in history (P. 54).
A thought of “ in between »»
The second chapter, devoted to Martyrs and at theItineraryrefocus on the relationships between learning and imagination. It allows you to attach the genre of travel to that of history in a very relevant way, based as much on ancient tradition (Herodotus) as on innovative writing modes, like that of Corinne of Germaine de Staël.
The third chapter makes it possible to approach the observation of mores as a means of grasping history. Important question which, too, is part of a longtime philosophical and historiographical tradition, while nourishing a new way of writing history at the beginning of XIXe century, notably thanks to the historical novel at the Scott. This section is also an opportunity for Jacob Lachat to analyze the look taken by Chateaubriand on the historicity of the so -called “ primitive »: The feeling of belonging to a finishing caste leads the author to stand out from a fixist conception of these peoples, but also to express the nostalgia for the period of the first French colonizations in North America.
In a fourth step, the political writings published by Chateaubriand under the Empire and the Restoration put the political uses of history in the foreground. While taking stock of the concept of “ History Court “, Jacob Lachat shows how Chateaubriand’s political position under restoration pushes him to develop a thought of” in between ».
The idea of historical continuity does not be confused with him with the requirement of maintaining tradition, but allows him to defend an open vision of social and political evolution, almost reconciled with the concept of progress, which he previously denied. Of these texts emerges “ A totalizing vision of history as an autonomous force deployed in one way despite the pulsements of modern society (P. 212).
The forms “ literary »Of history
By approaching contemporary philosophies of history, Chateaubriand manifests its taking into account the historiographical context of restoration. Jacob Lachat deals with it in the next chapter, fascinating with the new lighting he brings on the interactions between the great writer and the young historiographical school hatched in the 1820s.
Jacob Lachat focuses on the programmatic texts of each other. He treats the preface to Historical studies Not only as the space where an enlightening history of history is developed, a panorama of the various post -revolutionary approaches of the historical material (fatalist, picturesque, erudite, nomothetic), but also as the means of marking its own position in the world of historians. Chateaubriand is faced with the beginnings of the empowerment of historiographical discourse – as evidenced by the section of its edition of Complete works (Ladvocat) specifically bringing together his historical works. New challenge, therefore: how to sing out his discourse on history in this new configuration which tends to separate the latter from the forms “ literary »» ?
We arrive by this path in the last chapter, devoted to the royal way of historical writing at Chateaubriand, that of the “ History in person ». Its path has been frayted through the previous chapters, by the accent put in each stage on the historicization of the self, the subjectivation of the approach of the eras. Detouring in the end of a history in the process of disciplinarization of which he refuses the “ System spirit », Chateaubriand invests the form of memories, whose link with history has been revived by the strong editorial activity having promoted it under restoration, as shown by Damien Zanone.
The construction of a vision of history to the filter of “ Me “Fulls the heroic vision to which Chateaubriand remains attached, signs his refusal of a fetish story too much the document and allows him to value” His situation as a writer in history (P. 272). A parallel with Michelet’s position, also making “ Me The great tool for unraveling the darkness of history, comes at a time, even if the opposition between a historian entirely turned towards the resurrection of the past and a writer devoted to the construction of the tomb of the revolutionary eras seems a little too schematic.
Editorial and generational variety
Table, erudition and imagination, manners, political vision, contemporary evolution of historiography, function of “ Me “: So many” boxes »Which correspond to classic and important questions about the writing of history to XIXe century. Jacob Lachat also knows how to give meaning to the heterogeneity of Chateaubriand’s historical works, the continuous reinvention of forms to say history.
The analyzes of Jacob Lachat may have a little too trendy, in each chapter, to rely on the lighting of binary tensions: between the scientific form of the table and its aesthetic dimension, between scholarship and imagination, between taking distance from the past and the will of a preparing, etc. Repetitive process and a tantnet school, which tends to weaken the reader’s attention, especially since he ultimately leads to the well-known image, thematized by the author himself, of a man “ between two times ».
In the same vein, the conclusion only summarizes the approach in a detailed way – it is useful, but not very stimulating. The analyzes undoubtedly do not fully fulfill the declaration of intention of the introduction: “ Precisely examine the conditions that have made possible and celebrates its singular relationship to history (P. 20). The contextualization of the thought of Chateaubriand’s history remains almost only anchored in literary history and hardly takes into account the upheavals and political struggles, the material conditions of literary production. The editorial networks to which Chateaubriand and liberal historians, the sociological and generational differences which separate them are respectively evoked too quickly.
This results in a somewhat sanitized vision of the historical work of Chateaubriand, giving the impression of an above-ground development of his thought of history, which the intellectual context would be enough to explain, and which would have little resonance with the questions of today on the writing of history. From this result a few weak moments, especially in the chapters II,, III And Ivwhere the analysis is absorbed in the presentation of the ideas and processes of Chateaubriand. Nevertheless, the contribution of this book must be praised, by the continuous precision with which it sweeps the historiographical course of Chateaubriand and proposes to give it meaning.