On the method and spirit of Michelet’s historiographical revolution

ABSTRACT

The Histoire de la révolution française (1847-1855) is widely regarded as one of the most significant texts in Jules Michelet’s historiographical work. Written and published in seven volumes, with a final version accompanied by four paratexts which are privileged spaces of expression for Michelet’s thought, it aims to present the theoretical-methodological foundations of each production. While a self-reflective disposition does permeate all of the four prefaces, the one titled “De la méthode et de l’esprit de ce livre” stands out for being a perfect condensation of the most typical and radical stylistic traits of Micheletian prose: the vertical style inflated by parataxis and tyrannized by predicates is intensified here by the unapologetic deployment of metaphors, proverbs, and anecdotes, thus configuring the language of this Micheletian “discourse on the method” of sorts. My initial hypothesis is that the exposition of the philosophical-political debate in which Michele’s text takes part explains and, to a large extent, justifies its distinctive stylistic resources. The article seeks to explain the consonance between metaphors and ideas, between the spirit and the letter of the historian, seeking to demonstrate how what today strikes us as “literary” must be reread as a historiographical project, epistemologically committed to the Revolution.

Jules Michelet; theory of history; historiographic method