Description
Book SynopsisIn Lost Worlds historian Jonathan Dewald shows that we need to look back further in time, into the nineteenth century, when numerous French intellectuals developed many of the key concepts that historians employ today. Lost Worlds sheds much-needed light on how contemporary ideas about the historian’s task came into being.
Trade Review“I found Lost Worlds highly stimulating. It taught me new things about nineteenth-century historiography and made me rethink things I thought I knew about the Annales school. Dewald’s book should attract a wide audience among French historians and people interested in the development of historical thought.”
—Jeremy D. Popkin,University of Kentucky
“Lost Worlds provides a provocative new analysis of French cultural contexts that contributed to the emergence of modern social history and the creative, critical insights of modern historical thought.”
—Lloyd Kramer Canadian Journal of History
“This book is an outstanding scholarly achievement that explores a revolution in scholarly thought with uncommon grace and erudition.”
—S. Bailey Choice
“Dewald’s open-minded, thoughtful, judicious approach draws on novels and literary criticism as well as historiography. His lucid style and coherent argumentation make his book a joy to read.”
—Laurence M. Porter French Review
“The book offers a series of intelligent and engaging close readings of unfamiliar texts, and the analysis, while at times overstated, is thought provoking.”
—Siân Reynolds European History Quarterly
Table of ContentsContents
Preface
Introduction: Historians and Modernity
1. “À la Table de Magny”: Men of Letters and Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century Paris
2. Ordering Time: The Problem of French Chronology
3. God and the Historian: Sainte-Beuve’s Port-Royal
4. Lost Worlds: Lucien Febvre and the Alien Past
5. Private Lives and Historical Knowledge
6. Nobles as Signifiers: Making Sense of a Class Structure
7. An Alternative Path to Rural History
Conclusion: On the Politics of Social History
Index
