Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 214
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978-0-8420-2804-2 • Hardback • October 2000 • $129.00 • (£99.00)
978-0-8420-2805-9 • Paperback • October 2000 • $49.00 • (£38.00)
978-1-4616-4438-5 • eBook • October 2000 • $46.50 • (£36.00)
K. Steven Vincent is professor of history at North Carolina State University. Alison Klairmont-Lingo is an independent scholar.
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.
— Joel Colton, Duke University
This superb collection of essays brings the past two centuries of French history to life like no other single volume I know of. Vivid portraits of men and women—from Jean-Paul Marat and his assassin, Charlotte Corday, in the French Revolution to the first denizens of 'Club Med' in the 1950s—bring into human focus the great political and cultural upheavals of modern France. Many of these articles are page-turners. They all offer fresh perspectives that will make The Human Tradition in Modern France a treasure trove for novices to the subject and seasoned professionals alike.
— Herrick Chapman, New York University