Historical story

What is the history of mentalities?

The history of mentalities, whose precursor was the French historian Lucien Febvre, was one of the most fertile fields for the development of historiography in the 20th century.

By Me. Cláudio Fernandes

History is a discipline that, since its institutionalization process as a “science”, in the 19th century, has gone through countless reformulations, revisions and theoretical battles. In the first half of the 20th century, among French historians, a methodological “revolution” took place. A revolution that would put down roots in the future of reflections on history. The School of Annales was the “flagship” of this revolution. It was from one of the founders of the Annales School, Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) , which gave rise to one of the most important branches of 20th century historiography, history das mentalities .

According to Febvre, there were layers of the historical development of humanity that did not undergo rapid and clear transformations like others. Thus, for example, political and social structures would be the first in which substantive changes could occur, while certain behaviors and ways of thinking would take significantly longer to change.

In this way, thoughts, ideas, ideologies, moral segments, atmospheres of scientific understanding, among others, would be within the sphere of mentalities , that is, enduring ways of thinking that characterize long spans of time. Part of the foundations of modern psychology, developed at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, helped Febvre to establish his theses on the history of mentalities. As researcher Ronald Raminelli points out:

“Under the influence of the psychology of Charles Blondel and Henri Wallon, Febvre launches what can be called a "manifesto of the history of mentalities", with the publication, in 1938, of the article entitled "La Phsychologie et L'Histoire" [''The Psychology of History''] in volume VIII of the Encyclopédic Française; then in 1941, in Annales d'Histoire Social, another article:"La Sensibilité dans l'Histoire" [''Sensitivity in History''], both found in the Combates by History. The two texts give some clues as to what the method of making the history of mentalities would be.” (Raminelli, Ronald. Lucien Febvre on the path of mentalities . R. History, São Paulo, n. 122, Jan/Jul. 1990. p. 97-115.)

To these initial works, Febvre would add great essays of historical investigation that explored the terrain of mentalities. The most notable examples are “Martin Luther, a destiny”, about the German religious reformer; “The beginning of the book:the impact of the Press (1450-1800)”, a pioneering work also in the area of ​​the history of reading; and “The problem of disbelief in the 16th century:the religion of Rabelais”, about the religious atmosphere at the time of the author of Gargantua and Pantagruel .

Febvre's intellectual heirs continued to develop research in the field of the history of ideas. Names such as Michel Vovelle, Philippe Ariès, Fernand Braudel and, later, Jacques Le Goff, Emmuel Le Roy Larurie, Roger Chartier, etc., joined the team, but also founded new areas of investigation, such as cultural history and the “new history”. ".

*Image credit:Commons


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