The University of North Carolina Press

352 pp., 6 x 9

Paper

ISBN  978-0-8078-9290-9

Published: November 2006

The "I" of History

Self-Fashioning and National Consciousness in Jules Michelet

By Vivian Kogan

The "I" of History: Self-Fashioning and National Consciousness in Jules Michelet examines the poetics of the historian's self-portraiture as it intersects with the nation and history. History exists because someone tells the story. In Michelet's unique staging and performance of the past, the way the story is told is the story. Long before Charles de Gaulle, Michelet asserted that he "was" France. His self-representation as the "I" of the nation and the embodiment of history ("moi-histoire") takes form as a rhetorical personification that shapes the historian's writing as it informs his project to use history to construct the nation. Offering a new multidisciplinary perspective, The "I" of History both exposes Michelet's vision of France, his grand narrative, and it demystifies that narrative in the analysis of Michelet's final text, History of the Nineteenth Century.

About the Author

Vivian Kogan is associate professor in the Department of French and Italian at Dartmouth College.