The Saint-Napoleon: Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France
322The Saint-Napoleon: Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France
322Hardcover
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Overview
Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Sudhir Hazareesingh vividly reconstructs the symbolic richness and political complexity of the Saint-Napoleon festivities in a work that opens up broader questions about the nature of the French state, unity and lines of fracture in society, changing boundaries between public and private spheres, and the role of myth and memory in constructing nationhood. The state's Bonapartist identity was at times vigorously contested by local social, political, and religious groups. In various regions, people used the national day to celebrate their own communities and to honor their hometown veterans; but elsewhere, the revival of republican sentiment clashed sharply with imperial attitudes.
Sophisticated and gracefully written, this book offers rich insights into modern French history and culture.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780674013414 |
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Publisher: | Harvard University Press |
Publication date: | 05/31/2004 |
Pages: | 322 |
Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d) |
Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Introduction: Civic Festivities in Nineteenth-Century France
1. A Common Sentiment of National Glory
2. Variations on Provincial Themes
3. Proud to Be French
4. Honorable and Honored Citizens
5. Incidents, Accidents, Excesses
6. All the Majesty of the State
7. The Immense Space between Heaven and Earth
8. We Have Our Own Music
9. Eroding Bonapartist Sovereignty
10. Legitimist Coldness, Republican Enthusiasm
Conclusion: Festivity, Identity, Civility
Notes
Primary Sources
Index
What People are Saying About This
Masterful, witty, and beautifully written, The Saint-Napoleon is an important contribution to modern French history and European political culture. The intellectual sophistication of this work on civic festivities and the evolution of politics at a crucial moment in European history is striking and very impressive indeed.
Masterful, witty, and beautifully written, The Saint-Napoleon is an important contribution to modern French history and European political culture. The intellectual sophistication of this work on civic festivities and the evolution of politics at a crucial moment in European history is striking and very impressive indeed.
Caroline Ford, University of British Columbia
An excellent work, original and engagingly written. The importance of this book on Saint-Napoleon's day is that it manages time and again to link national themes to the varieties of local experience, social and political. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of the Second Empire and the many contradictions that beset it. This is a rare book, at once learned and accessible.
Patrice Higonnet, Harvard University
An impressive piece of scholarship, in which fascinating detail about Napoleonic festivals is linked to larger historical patterns of state building, identity formation, and politicization. With wit and grace, Hazareesingh has written an unusually generous, humane, and non-ideological discussion of politics in nineteenth-century France.
Thomas Kselman, University of Notre Dame
Sudhir Hazareesingh offers an exciting new perspective on the politics of the French Second Empire with this study of the festival of Saint Napoleon -- how it was promoted and how it was resisted and subverted. Richly documented from national and local archives, it sheds a powerful light on political passions the length and breadth of France.
Robert Gildea, Oxford University