L'écriture de l'histoire grecque en France au XIXe siècle : temporalités historiques et enjeux politiques

Abstract

Is it pertinent to study the tales of ancient Greece in light of the historic temporalities that govern their narratives ? This author believes that it is, and this article is an attempt to map out the political stakes that, in the 19th century, marked the historical discourse about Athenian democracy. The first of two parts examines Volney and Benjamin Constant's critique of the way in which the Greco-Roman model evoked revolution and assesses the significance of their analysis. The second part analyses the Greek tales written by Victor Duruy and Louis Menard and looks at how the work of George Grote was received in France. At the time of the Revolution, references to the Greco-Roman world drew on a conception of time based on the immutability of nature and a historicity that beat to the rhythm of progress. The ancient world thus emerges both as a role model and as a witness to the distance that separates antiquity from modem times. It is the paradigmatic reference to antiquity that became marginalized in the aftermath of the Reign of Terror. It was denounced not only as an inopportune imitation but, even worse, as being devoid of any historic meaning or, in other words, deeply «anti-historic». How, then, has the writing of history, been affected by the dissolution of the historia magistra vitae and by the Greek world's subsequent introduction into the historical process of the rise of western civilisation ?