De l'homme sauvage à l'homme historique : l'expérience américaine dans la culture française - article ; n°4 ; vol.33, pg 729-739

Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations - Année 1978 - Volume 33 - Numéro 4 - Pages 729-739
This article analyzes the image that cultivated Frenchmen had of the English colonies in America at the moment when they became the United States. I seek, first, to describe the way in which social and political myth of the young Republic became established, a myth which reconciled the order prevailing in France in the nation and the order required by reason. This myth, moreover, was nourished by the frustration and discontent born of the spectacle of what was only later to be called the Ancien Regime. Paradoxically, it was the French Revolution which was responsible for the fact that this image ceased to be a point of reference : for the Revolution replaced this image with its own example, elevating the national regeneration into model of universal generation. Finally, after Thermidor, the American Republic lost its privileged status, becoming just another object of cultural inquiry, whether from a historico -social (Volney) or literary perspective (Chateaubriand).
11 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.