Jules Michelet (August 21, 1798 – February 9, 1874) was a French historian. Events 1192 - Minamoto Yoritomo becomes Seii Tai Shōgun and the De facto ruler of Japan. Year 1798 ( MDCCXCVIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Events 474 - Zeno crowned as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Year 1874 ( MDCCCLXXIV) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. See also History An historian is an individual who studies and writes about History, and is regarded as an Authority on it He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions. The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France (or French Calvinists) from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
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Early life
His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press. A place was offered him in the imperial printing office, but his father was able to send him to the famous Collège or Lycée Charlemagne, where he distinguished himself. He passed the university examination in 1821, and was soon appointed to a professorship of history in the Collège Rollin. Year 1821 ( MDCCCXXI) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Common year
Soon after this, in 1824, he married. This was one of the most favourable periods ever for scholars and men of letters in France, and Michelet had powerful patrons in Abel-François Villemain and Victor Cousin, among others. An intellectual (from the adjective meaning "involving thought and reason" is a person who tries to use his or her Intelligence and analytical thinking, Abel-François Villemain ( 9 June 1790 &ndash 8 May 1870) was a French Politician and Writer. Victor Cousin ( 28 November 1792 - 13 January 1867) was a French Philosopher. Although he was an ardent politician (having from his childhood embraced republicanism and a peculiar variety of romantic free-thought), he was above all a man of letters and an inquirer into the history of the past. Republicanism is the Ideology of governing a nation as a Republic, with an emphasis on Liberty, Rule of law, Popular sovereignty His earliest works were school textbooks. Between 1825 and 1827 he produced diverse sketches, chronological tables, etc, of modern history. His précis of the subject, published in 1827, is a sound and careful book, far better than anything that had appeared before it, and written in a sober yet interesting style. In the same year he was appointed maître de conferences at the École normale supérieure. École Normale de Musique de ParisThe École normale supérieure (also known as Normale Sup’, Normale, ENS, ENS-Paris, ENS-Ulm or Four years later, in 1831, the Introduction à l'histoire universelle showed a very different style, exhibiting the idiosyncrasy and literary power of the writer to greater advantage, but also displaying, in the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, "the peculiar visionary qualities which made Michelet the most stimulating, but the most untrustworthy (not in facts, which he never consciously falsifies, but in suggestion) of all historians. Idiosyncrasy, from Greek ιδιοσυγκρασία idiosunkrasia, "a peculiar temperament" "habit of body" ( idios "one's own" "
Record Office
The events of 1830 had placed him in a better position for study by obtaining him a place in the Record Office, and a deputy-professorship under Guizot in the literary faculty of the university. François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (4 October 1787 -12 September 1874 was a French Historian, Orator, and Statesman. Soon afterwards he began his chief and monumental work, the Histoire de France that would take 30 years to complete. But he accompanied this with numerous other books, chiefly' of erudition, such as the Œuvres choisies de Vico, the Mémoires de Luther écrits par lui-même, the Origines du droit français, and somewhat later the le Procès des Templiers.
1838 was a year of great importance in Michelet's life. Year 1838 ( MDCCCXXXVIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Common He was in the fullness of his powers, his studies had fed his natural aversion to the principles of authority and ecclesiasticism, and at a moment when the revived activity of the Jesuits caused some real and more pretended alarm he was appointed to the chair of history at the Collège de France. The Society of Jesus ( Latin: Societas Iesu, SJ and SI or SJ, SI) is a Catholic religious order The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment ( Grand établissement) located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement Assisted by his friend Edgar Quinet, he began a violent polemic against the unpopular order and the principles which it represented, a polemic which made their lectures, and especially Michelet's, one of the most popular resorts of the day. Edgar Quinet ( February 17, 1803 &ndash March 27, 1875) was a French Historian and Intellectual. He published, in 1839, his Histoire romaine, but this was in his graver and earlier manner. The results of his lectures appeared in the volumes Du prêtre, de la femme et de la famille and Le peuple. These books do not display the apocalyptic style which, partly borrowed from Lamennais, characterizes Michelet's later works, but they contain in miniature almost the whole of his curious ethicopolitico-theological creed--a mixture of sentimentalism, communism, and anti-sacerdotalism, supported by the most eccentric arguments, but urged with a great deal of eloquence. Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais, also known as Frédéric de La Mennais ( June 19, 1782 - February 27, 1854) was Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based Sacerdotalism (from Latin sacerdos, priest literally one who presents sacred offerings sacer, sacred and dare, to give is a term applied to the system
The principles of the outbreak of 1848 were in the air, and Michelet was one of many who condensed and propagated them: his original lectures were of so incendiary a kind that the course had to be interdicted. However, when the revolution broke out, Michelet, unlike many other men of letters, did not attempt to enter active political life, and merely devoted himself more strenuously to his literary work. Besides continuing the great history, he undertook and carried out, during the years between the downfall of Louis Philippe and the final establishment of Napoleon III, an enthusiastic Histoire de la revolution française. Louis Philippe ( 6 October 1773 &ndash 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the Napoléon III, also known as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (full name Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte) (20 April 1808 9 January 1873 was the first President Despite or because of its enthusiasm, this was by no means Michelet's best book. The events were too near and too well known, and hardly admitted the picturesque sallies into the blue distance which make the charm and the danger of his larger work. In actual picturesqueness as well as in general veracity of picture, the book cannot approach Carlyle's; while as a mere chronicle of the events it is inferior to half a dozen prosaic histories older and younger than itself. Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881 was a Scottish essayist satirist and historian whose work was highly influential during the Victorian era.
Minor Books
The coup d'état lost Michelet his place in the Record Office, since he refused to take the oaths to the empire. The new régime kindled afresh his republican zeal, and his second marriage with Mlle Adèle Malairet, a lady of some literary capacity and of republican sympathies, seems to have further stimulated his powers. While his great work of history was still his main pursuit, a crowd of extraordinary little books accompanied and diversified it. Sometimes they were expanded versions of its episodes, sometimes what may be called commentaries or companion volumes. In some of the best of them natural science, a new subject with Michelet, to which his wife is believed to have introduced him, supplies the text. The first of these (by no means the best) was Les Femmes de la revolution (1854), in which Michelet's natural and inimitable faculty of dithyrambic too often gives way to tedious and not very conclusive argument and preaching. The dithyramb was originally an ancient Greek hymn sung to the god Dionysus. In the next, L'Oiseau (1856), a new and most successful vein was struck. The subject of natural history was treated, not from the point of view of mere science, nor from that of sentiment,, nor of anecdote nor of gossip, but from that of the author's fervent democratic pantheism, and the result, though, as was to be expected, unequal, was often excellent. Pantheism ( Greek: πάν ( 'pan') = all and θεός ( 'theos') = God it literally means " God is All
L'Insecte, in the same key, but duller, followed. It was succeeded by L'Amour (1859), one of the author's most popular books. These remarkable works, half pamphlets half moral treatises, succeeded each other as a rule at the twelve months' interval, and the succession was almost unbroken for five or six years. L'Amour was followed by La Femme (1860), a book on which a whole critique of French literature and French character might be founded. Then came La Mer (1861), a return to the natural history class, which, considering the powers of the writer and the attraction of the subject, is perhaps a little disappointing. The next year (1862) the most striking of all Michelet's minor works, La Sorcière, made its appearance. ' Satanism and Witchcraft' (originally La Sorcière) is a book by Jules Michelet on the history of Witchcraft, published originally in French Developed out of an episode of the history, it has all its author's peculiarities in the strongest degree. It is a nightmare and nothing more, but a nightmare of the most extraordinary verisimilitude and poetical power.
This remarkable series, every volume of which was a work at once of imagination and of research, was not even yet finished, but the later volumes exhibit a certain falling off. The ambitious Bible de l'humanité (1864), an historical sketch of religions, has but little merit. In La Montagne (1868), the last of the natural history series, the tricks of staccato style are pushed even farther than by Victor Hugo in his less inspired moments, though--as is inevitable, in the hands of such a master of language as Michelet--the effect is frequently grandiose if not grand. Victor-Marie Hugo ( ( February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) was a French Poet, Playwright, Novelist Nos fils (1869), the last of the string of smaller books published during the author's life, is a tractate on education, written with ample knowledge of the facts and with all Michelet's usual sweep, and range of view, if with visibly declining powers of expression. But in a book published posthumously, Le Banquet, these powers reappear at their fullest. The picture of the industrious and famishing populations of the Riviera is (whether true to fact or not) one of the best things that Michelet has done. To complete the list of his miscellaneous works, two collections of pieces, written and partly published at different times, may be mentioned. These are Les Soldats de la révolution and Legendes démocratiques du nord.
Michelet's Origines du droit français, cherchées dans les symboles et les formules du droit universel was edited by Émile Faguet in 1890 and went into a second edition in 1900. Émile Faguet ( December 17, 1847 - June 7, 1916) was a French writer and Critic.
The publication of this series of books, and the completion of his history, occupied Michelet during both decades of the empire. He lived partly in France, partly in Italy, and was accustomed to spend the winter on the Riviera, chiefly at Hyères. Hyères ( Provençal Occitan: Ieras in classical norm or Iero in Mistralian norm is a town and commune in the southeast of France
Masterpiece
At last, in 1867, the great work of his life was finished. In the usual edition it fills nineteen volumes. The first of these deals with the early history up to the death of Charlemagne, the second with the flourishing time of feudal France, the third with the 13th century, the fourth, fifth, and sixth with the Hundred Years' War, the seventh and eighth with the establishment of the rural power under Charles VII and Louis XI. The Hundred Years' War (Guerre de Cent Ans was a prolonged conflict lasting from 1337 to 1453 between two royal houses for the French throne vacant with the extinction of the senior Charles VII (22 February 1403 – 22 July 1461 called the Victorious (le Victorieux or the Well-Served (le Bien-Servi was King of France from 1422 Louis XI ( July 3, 1423 – August 30, 1483) called the Prudent (le Prudent and the Universal Spider ( Middle The 16th and 17th centuries have four volumes apiece, much of which is very distantly connected with French history proper, especially in the two volumes entitled Renaissance and Reforme. The last three volumes carry on the history of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Revolution.
Academic Reception
Michelet was perhaps the first historian to devote himself to anything like a picturesque history of the Middle Ages, and his account is still the most vivid that exists. His inquiry into manuscript and printed authorities was most laborious, but his lively imagination, and his strong religious and political prejudices, made him regard all things from a singularly personal point of view. There is an unevenness of treatment of historical incidents.
Political Life
Uncompromisingly hostile as Michelet was to the empire, its downfall and the accompanying disasters of the country once more stimulated him to activity. Not only did he write letters and pamphlets during the struggle, but when it was over he set himself to complete the vast task which his two great histories had almost covered by a Histoire du XIXe siècle. He did not, however, live to carry it farther than the Battle of Waterloo, and the best criticism of it is perhaps contained in the opening words of the introduction to the last volume--"l'âge me presse. In the Battle of Waterloo (Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo Belgium " The new republic was not altogether a restoration for Michelet, and his professorship at the Collège de France, of which he always contended he had been unjustly deprived, was not given back to him.
Grave
On his passing in 1874, Jules Michelet was interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Père Lachaise Cemetery (Cimetière du Père-Lachaise officially cimetière de l'Est, "East Cemetery" is the largest Cemetery in the city of Paris
Further reading
- To The Finland Station by Edmund Wilson
- Michelet by Roland Barthes
References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. To the Finland Station A Study in the Writing and Acting of History is the most famous book by the American critic and historian Edmund Wilson. Edmund Wilson ( May 8, 1895 &ndash June 12 1972) was an American Writer and Roland Barthes ( November 12, 1915 &ndash March 25, 1980) (ʀɔlɑ̃ baʀt was a French Literary critic, literary The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911 is a 29-volume reference work that marked the beginning of the Encyclopædia Britannica The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone
The Britannica gives as a reference G Monod, Jules Michelet: Études sur la vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1905). Gabriel Monod ( March 7, 1844 - April 10, 1912) was a French Historian, the nephew of Adolphe Monod.
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