Philippe Aries and the Politics of French Cultural History (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781558494633)

The author of Centuries of Childhood and other landmark historical works, Philippe Ari鑚 (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 mentalit駸--that developed in the decades following World War II. In this book, Patrick H. Hutton explores the relationship between Ari鑚's life and thought and evaluates his contribution to modern historiography, in France and abroad.

According to Hutton, the originality of Ari鑚'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 Fran軋ise, 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 ﾃ0/00cole des Hautes ﾃ0/00tudes en Sciences Sociales. At the same time, he fashioned himself as a man of letters in the intellectual tradition of the Action Fran軋ise 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 Ari鑚 left his personal signature on his scholarship.

Author: Patrick H. Hutton
ISBN-10: 1558494634
ISBN-13: 9781558494633
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Language: English
Published: 06/16/2004
Pages: 244
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 9.10h x 14.52w x 0.73d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2005 pg. 1464