TY - JOUR
AU - JONES, COLIN
AB - 22 4 REVIEWS OF BOOKS for his historical role, he just appends a four-page chronological outline at the very end of his study. This approach suited well the critic's polemical purpose in 1954 and the publication of this remarkable book did not fail to provoke some con- troversy However, now that more than thirty years have elapsed since its first publication one feels that the British reader - especially undergraduates studying French history or French literature - would have been helped by an extended introduction. In other words, Barthes's Micbelet itself needs to be put into historical context and viewed in relation to the intellectual life of left-wing Paris in the early 1950s. Barthes's critical methods need to be seen in relation to existential Marxism and to Bachelardian literary theory His political stance - branding Michelet as a petty bourgeois, snarling at the 'pious legend' woven around the figure of Michelet by Radical Socialists since the time of Jules Ferry - surely merits some elucidation for student readers who come from a different cultural tradition. An updated bibliography would also have been useful. This English translation reproduces the bibliography given in the 1970s' French reprint of the book Much 
TI - Reviews of Books
JF - French History
DO - 10.1093/fh/2.2.224
DA - 1988-06-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/reviews-of-books-vaJffnsyXd
SP - 224
EP - 225
VL - 2
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -