Considered as one of the masters of French and European Romanticism, Jules Michelet (1798-1874) is above all presented as the "father" of the history of France but also as the “teacher” of this nation. A man of the people, dedicated to the people, the historian has always thought that his mission was to enlighten them, to endow the still nascent republican institutions with a national history. Jules Michelet thus made himself a prophet of France, offering it an idealized and personified history. His prolific work remains today more essential than ever, but it is nonetheless highly controversial. The rereading of this pantheon of our history thus deserves as much prudence and vigilance as pleasure and passion.
Jules Michelet, a relentless polygraph in the service of the Republic
Born in Paris in 1798, the son of a printer, Jules Michelet grew up in the living memory of the Revolution. Doctor of letters at the age of 21, he became a history teacher. In 1831, he entered the National Archives and taught at the university, then in 1838 became a professor at the Collège de France. Far from the sometimes idle image of the romantic, he presents himself as a tireless teacher. His approach to history is through teaching. His earliest writings are de facto textbooks that will give him an important first experience when embarking on his great national fresco.
The revolution of July 1830 strikes the historian who then feels invested with a new mission as he specifies in his preface to the 1869 edition of the Histoire de France “During those memorable days, a great light shone and I saw France. She had annals, not a history. Michelet thus set about writing a monumental history of France, from its origins to the Revolution of 1789, seventeen volumes which would take him more than thirty years of his life. However, the prodigal historian, the relentless archival researcher, is above all a man of letters and a fabulous storyteller imbued with romanticism and his free thought. His desire was to give flesh to dead matter, not hesitating to dramatize History in order to bring it to life.
Michelet will pause this fresco many times, especially when he feels the breath of the resurgent Republic (the Second Republic) that he wishes to guide with his History of the Revolution (1847-1853), great indictment against the Old Regime. His hostility to the Second Empire deprived him of any official function, leaving him plenty of time to complete his Histoire de France as well as writing more poetic texts on nature such as Birds (1856) and Insects (1857). Michelet also wrote more moral essays on Les Femmes (1859) or Love (1858), more polemical writings like Le Peuple (1846) or The Bible of Humanity (1864) without forgetting The Witch (1862) where Michelet sometimes gives free rein to his imagination.
Jules Michelet died in 1874 as he had lived:while working on a Histoire du XIX e century .
A French historian with a disputed legacy
Michelet's work is one of the most prolific but also one of the most complex. It is difficult to form an overall opinion on a work of such scope. One of the merits of the historian was to rely on unpublished documents when he was at the head of the National Archives. However, as his career progressed, he sometimes fell into the easy way, using unverified secondary sources and revealing himself a posteriori wrong.
When we read Michelet, we are above all struck by his fine writing, his unique way of romanticizing and bring history to life but also its bias. Two main elements are thus generally reproached by historians to Michelet:his lack of rigor and his omnipresent morality. Michelet writes history with his heart and does not hesitate to express his likes and dislikes in the face of past events. A man of the people, he remains undeniably attached to the Republic and its ideas, going so far as one of its propagandists.
It is therefore necessary to include Michelet's legacy in its historical current, that of the resolutely republican French historical school and deliberately hostile to the Ancien Régime. To quote Michelet's writings is to quote texts that seek to denounce the so-called misdeeds of past centuries, from the Middle Ages to the Revolution. The dominant idea was indeed then to present History as a continuous progress as much of the techniques as of the moral sense until peace and republican justice. The ideal of progress which must be taught to the people, that is the credo of Michelet, a credo not without taking a stand.
The work of Jules Michelet is thus characterized more by his generous and enthusiastic writing, his passion as a storyteller than by his historical truth. It is indeed from him that important historical errors arise as well as a large number of myths which have had and still have a strong hold on our history. Michelet has thus bequeathed to us a romantic reinterpretation of the history of France, a legend which gives us to dream but which also shows us the dangers of confusion between morality, power and history.
Main works
- MICHELET, Jules, History of France:Volume 1, Gaul, the Invasions, Charlemagne, Editions des Equateurs, Paris, 2008.
- MICHELET, Jules, History of the French Revolution, Editions Gallimard, Collection Folio Histoire, Paris, 2007.
- MICHELET, Jules, La Sorcière, Editions Flammarion, Paris, 1993.
Bibliography
- PETITIER, Paule, Jules Michelet:L'homme histoire, Editions Grasset, Paris, 2006.