Lettres de Paris par le P.N.D.G. : Lettres sur l'Histoire de France? : La critique de l’histoire chez Stendhal et les historiens libéraux

Abstract

Considering a new generation of historians and a new way of writing history, Stendhal is himself part of the debates about a new 'writing culture' in an emerging historical science from 1820 on. Contributing regularly to the British press, Stendhal reviews not only a wide range of novels, but also many of these contemporary historiographical works. Both Stendhal and mostly liberal french historians share a self-perception of a young new generation that overcomes old debates. Thus, as this article shows, Stendhal adopts the role of a critic in the sense of the french Enlightenement and sticks to important parts of this Enlightenment-ethos for his self-positioning as an author, while the 'new historians' tend to exaggerate their emancipation from Enlightenment positions for the sake of their much asserted novelty.