Vous consultezL’historien de la ville et l’espace public

The Urban Historian and the public sphere

Urban histories were on the rise in France throughout the early modern period, with new versions, re-editions, and abridgments multiplying in the eighteenth century. The focus here is not on the content of these histories, but on the dedications and prefaces that supported them. How did urban historians situate themselves within the public sphere ? Studying a collected body of roughly one hundred texts published from the seventeenth century up to the end of the eighteenth century reveals a shift : If, at the beginning of the period, historians were indistinguishable from their subject, retiring behind their municipal sponsors or the local erudite community, they progressively asserted an active authorship, now writing against the local public or learned establishment and appealing to public opinion. This evolution reflects not only the dissolution of particular enclaves within the national realm but also the reaction of the urban cultural world to changes in the literary sphere, as well as its participation in national debates that were not only literary, but political in scope.