Abstract
Robert Gildea’s essay explores a personal and professional fascination with two contrasting incarnations of modern France, revolutionary France and la France profonde. Encounters with la France profonde gave rise to a first book on Education in Provincial France and, subsequently, to Marianne in chains, the story of life in the Loire valley under the German Occupation. Encounters with revolutionary France stimulated an international oral history project on Europe’s 1968, including interviews with former French activists. This led on to work on the French Resistance, constructed around stories of personal and political engagement. On all this is cast the shadow of a great-uncle who facilitated General de Gaulle’s introduction to the British in 1940.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Editors’ note: A creation of the Revolution, the école normale’s initial aim was to train ‘enlightened’ teachers, who would then spread the Republican views through their teaching .
- 2.
Michael Pollak, Dominique Veillon and Danièle Voldman (eds.), ‘Questions à l’histoire orale: table ronde du 20 juin 1986’, Les Cahiers de l’IHTP 4 (1987, 74, 104). Another IHTP round table in 1992—Danièle Voldman (ed.), ‘La Bouche de la vérité? La recherche historique et les sources orales’, Les Cahiers de l’IHTP 21 (1992)—elicited similar misgivings about oral testimony.
- 3.
AN 72 AJ 220, testimony of Denis Saurat, Sept. 1951.
- 4.
There is an appreciation of him by John Robert Colombo, O Rare Denis Saurat (2003).
References
Alain-Fournier. 1913. Le Grand Meaulnes. Paris: Emile-Paul frères.
Burrin, Philippe. 1995. La France à l’heure allemande. Paris: Seuil.
Chabrol, Claude (dir.). 1993. L’Œil de Vichy.
Cobb, Richard. 1970. The Police and the People: French Popular Protest, 1789–1820. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cobban, Alfred. 1957–1965. History of Modern France, 3 vols. London: Penguin.
Colombo, John Robert. 2003. O Rare Denis Saurat. Ontario: George A. Vandeburgh.
Courtois, Stéphane, Denis Peschanski, and Adam Rayski. 1989. Le Sang de l’étranger: les immigrés de la MOI dans la Résistance. Paris: Fayard.
David, Elisabeth. 1960. French Provincial Cooking. London: Michael Joseph.
de Gaulle, Charles. 1945. Discours prononcé par le général De Gaulle le 20 janvier 1944. In La Conférence Africaine Française. Brazzaville, 30 janvier–8 février 1944, 27–31. Paris: Ministère des colonies.
de Vigny, Alfred. 1835. Servitude et grandeur militaires. Paris: Delagrave.
Denis, Michel, and Pierre Goubert. 1964. 1789: les Français ont la parole: cahiers de doléances des États généraux. Paris: Julliard.
Gildea, Robert. 1983. Education in Provincial France, 1800–1914. A Study of Three Departments. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gildea, Robert. 1994. The Past in French History. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gildea, Robert. 1996. France Since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gildea, Robert. 2002. Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation. London: Macmillan.
Gildea, Robert. 2008. Children of the Revolution. The French, 1799–1914. London: Allen Lane.
Gildea, Robert. 2009. Eternal France: Crisis and National Self-Perception in France, 1870–2005. In Nations and Their Histories: Constructions and Representations, ed. Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne, 139–156. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gildea, Robert. 2010. The Long March of Oral History: Around 1968 in France. Oral History 38 (1): 68–80.
Gildea, Robert. 2015. Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance. London and Cambridge, MA: Faber & Faber/Harvard University Press.
Gildea, Robert, James Mark, and Anette Warring (eds.). 2013. Europe’s 1968: Voices of Revolt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Giraudoux, Jean. 1935. La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu. Paris: Grasset.
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1950. La Mémoire collective. Paris: PUF.
Le Béguec, Gilles, and Denis Peschanski (eds.). 2000. Les Élites locales dans la tourmente, du Front populaire aux années cinquante. Paris: CNRS.
McManners, John. 1961. French Ecclesiastical Society Under the Ancien Régime. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Nora, Pierre (ed.). 1984–1992. Les Lieux de Mémoire, 3 vols. Paris: Gallimard.
Ophüls, Marcel (dir.). 1969. Le Chagrin et la pitié.
Pollak, Michael, Dominique Veillon, and Danièle Voldman (eds.). 1987. Questions à l’histoire orale: table ronde du 20 juin 1986. Les Cahiers de l’IHTP 4.
Poznanski, Renée. 1997. Les Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Paris: Hachette.
Rousso, Henry. 1987. Le Syndrome de Vichy. Paris: Seuil.
Sweets, John. 1986. Choices in Vichy France: The French Under Nazi Occupation. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Voldman, Danièle (ed.). 1992. La Bouche de la vérité? La recherche historique et les sources orales. Les Cahiers de l’IHTP 21.
Wieviorka, Annette. 1986. Ils étaient juifs, résistants, communistes. Paris: Denoël.
Zaretsky, Robert. 1995. Nîmes at War: Religion, Politics, and Public Opinion in the Gard, 1938–1944. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Zeldin, Theodore. 1973–1977. France, 1848–1945, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gildea, R. (2018). A Tale of Two Frances and a Curious Ancestor. In: Bragança, M., Louwagie, F. (eds) Ego-histories of France and the Second World War. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70860-7_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70860-7_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70859-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70860-7
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)