Forum on Mona Ozouf

Abstract

Mona Ozouf is one of the most respected French historians alive today. In humble recognition of her outstanding insights into modern French politics and culture, French History here publishes an extended forum on her memoir Composition française. The distinguished participants in this forum, to whom we are extremely grateful for their wisdom and insight, have felt a sense almost of nervous pride as we have come together to share our views of this book. This I think stems less from Mona Ozouf's (unquestioned) mastery of some of the great themes of modern historiography – it has less to do with the exceptional elegance of her reading as well as her writing – less to do with her subtlety as she considers quintessentially French problems with an original eye. The collective feeling, expressed by all the eminent contributors to our forum, has been that the book has touched each of us as we think about the ways in which we attempt to go about our métier as historians. In our discussions as this forum was prepared, and as the contributors have read each others’ reflections in draft, a personal, indeed private perspective on our own qualities as historians has emerged, more so certainly than is usual in criticism. The contributors have expressed this unexpectedly in emails. We have shared a strange and surprising degree of personal views about Brittany, about French culture, about the revision of French revolutionary historiography, about the place of intellectuals in French life and of women within French historical and intellectual circles. Our shared discussions about Ozouf have led us all to express something privately felt about our own aspirations as historians, and perhaps to hint at what we hope for in the study of French history.