Origines de la France contemporaine, Les. Taine began this massive work in 1871 during the Commune, and devoted his life to it. Halévy called the title ‘vaste, démesuré’, and the project to understand the contemporary political and social reality of France through its origins in the ancien régime and the Revolution is grandiose. Taine invents a unique form, combining history which is social (ordinary people, the countryside, the provinces), constitutional (Le Régime moderne), and ideological (the philosophes, especially J.-J. Rousseau) with sociology (L'Église and L'École) and psychology (the pathology of the Jacobin), in a style which includes Stendhalien litotes (L'Ancien Régime) and a Zola-like fascination with horror (La Conquête jacobine) while (remarkably for the time) giving full references to archive material. The work manifests Taine's unresolved conflicts: flux/system; récit/tableau; liberal-sceptical tolerance/anti-democratic traditionalism. But it has always been read tendentiously, arousing antagonism from all sides. The Left (and the University) vilified Taine for his anti-Revolutionary and anti-democratic position. The Right, while exploiting his work, never forgave him his account of the iniquities and absurdities of the ancien régime. The Church remembered his anticlericalism. The Bonapartists were incensed at his treatment of their hero. The army thought him unpatriotic…. Such is the grandeur et misère of the intellectual.
Taine can be repetitive: see the abridged version (ed. F. Léger, 1974).
[Colin Evans]
