View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Andrews Research Repository TThhee NNeeww eennffaanntt dduu ssiièèccllee:: JJoosseepphh ddee MMaaiissttrree aass aa WWrriitteerr Edited by Carolina Armenteros and Richard A. Lebrun St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture ST ANDREWS STUDIES IN FRENCH HISTORY AND CULTURE The history and historical culture of the French-speaking world is a major field of interest among English-speaking scholars. The purpose of this series is to publish a range of shorter monographs and studies, between 25,000 and 50,000 words long, which illuminate the history of this community of peoples between the end of the Middle Ages and the late twentieth century. The series covers the full span of historical themes relating to France: from political history, through military/naval, diplomatic, religious, social, financial, cultural and intellectual history, art and architectural history, to literary culture. Titles in the series are rigorously peer-reviewed through the editorial board and external assessors, and are published as both e-books and paperbacks. Editorial Board Dr Guy Rowlands, University of St Andrews (Editor-in-Chief) Professor Andrew Pettegree, University of St Andrews Professor Andrew Williams, University of St Andrews Dr David Culpin, University of St Andrews Dr David Evans, University of St Andrews Dr Linda Goddard, University of St Andrews Dr Alexander Marr, University of St Andrews Dr Bernhard Struck, University of St Andrews Dr Stephen Tyre, University of St Andrews Dr Malcolm Walsby, University of St Andrews Professor James McMillan, University of Edinburgh Dr David Parrott, University of Oxford Professor Rafe Blaufarb, Florida State University Professor Darrin McMahon, Florida State University Dr Simon Kitson, University of London Institute in Paris Professor Eric Nelson, Missouri State University The New enfant du siècle: Joseph de Maistre as a Writer Edited by CAROLINA ARMENTEROS and RICHARD A. LEBRUN St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture PUBLISHED BY THE CENTRE FOR FRENCH HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS School of History, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom This series is a collaboration between the following institutions : Centre for French History and Culture, University of St Andrews http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~cfhc/ Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, Florida State University http://www.fsu.edu/napoleon/ University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP), University of London http://www.ulip.lon.ac.uk/ Digital Research Repository, University of St Andrews Library http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ © The authors 2010 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of the Centre for French History and Culture. First published 2010 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University of St Andrews ISBN 978-1-907548-00-0 paperback ISBN 978-1-907548-01-7 e-book Front cover: portrait of Joseph de Maistre by Benoît Molin Reproduced with thanks with the gracious permission of the Musées d’Art et d’Histoire of Chambéry (Savoie). Contents Acknowledgements page iii List of contributors v Editors’ note vii 1 Introduction: assessing Maistre’s style and rhetoric 1 Richard A. Lebrun 2 Joseph de Maistre as pamphleteer 19 Richard A. Lebrun 3 Joseph de Maistre, letter writer 47 Pierre Glaudes Translated by Kevin Michael Erwin and Richard A. Lebrun 4 Joseph de Maistre: the paradox of the writer 75 Benjamin Thurston 5 Epilogue: the forced inhabitant of history 99 Carolina Armenteros Bibliography 117 Index 123 ii Acknowledgments The essays contained within this volume were first presented at Reappraisals/Reconsidérations, the Fifth International Colloquium on Joseph de Maistre, held at Jesus College, Cambridge on 4 and 5 December 2008. We would like to thank most warmly Darrin McMahon and Guy Rowlands for their extremely helpful comments on the text and exceedingly useful suggestions for the wider project of editing the colloquium proceedings. Our gratitude goes out likewise to the anonymous reviewers of St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture, and to Mouna Ben Hassine for her help with formatting the document. The Editors November 2009 iii iv List of contributors Carolina Armenteros is a Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of Groningen and a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. She specializes in European social and political thought ca. 1748-1914, with a special emphasis on France. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on Maistre’s philosophy of history and has published two articles on him. One of them appeared in the Journal of the History of Ideas and discusses his contribution to the rise of moral statistics. The other, published in History of Political Thought, describes his historicism. She has co-edited and contributed to the essay collection Historicising the French Revolution (2008), where she writes about Maistre as a forerunner of French sociological ideas on the divided self. Additional interests of hers include the history of historicism, of female education and moral philosophy. Kevin Michael Erwin is a Ph.D. Candidate in French at Columbia University in New York. He holds degrees from Columbia University, University of Paris VII, University of Washington and Boston University. He has been a translator since 2002. Pierre Glaudes, Professor of French Literature at the Université Paris- Sorbonne (Paris IV), has devoted his studies to nineteenth-century novelists and essayists. He is the editor of the Œuvres de Joseph de Maistre (Robert Laffont, 2007). His works include Atala, le désir cannibale (Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), Joseph de Maistre et les figures de l’histoire (Librairie Nizet, 1997), Nouvelles de Mérimée (Gallimard, 2007), the Œuvre romanesque de Léon Bloy (Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2006), and Esthétique de Barbey d’Aurevilly (Garnier, 2009). He has edited Le journal de Léon Bloy (2 vols., Robert Laffont, 1999) and is currently directing the edition of the Œuvre critique de Barbey d’Aurevilly (Les Belles Lettres, 2005-), four volumes of which have so far appeared. v Richard Lebrun is Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of two monographs on Joseph de Maistre: Throne and Altar: The Political and Religious Thought of Joseph de Maistre and Joseph de Maistre: An Intellectual Militant. He has translated and edited two volumes of essays on Maistre (Maistre Studies and Joseph de Maistre’s Life, Thought, and Influence: Selected Studies) as well as several of Maistre’s works (Considerations on France; St Petersburg Dialogues; Against Rousseau: Joseph de Maistre’s Essays On the State of Nature and On the Sovereignty of the People; and An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon). Most recently he has produced The Writings of Joseph de Maistre, a database of all Maistre’s writings in English translation, available by library subscription from InteLex. Benjamin Thurston completed a D.Phil. thesis on Joseph de Maistre (Joseph de Maistre: Logos and Logomachy) at Oxford University in 2001. He has written several articles on Maistre’s theory of language, including: ‘Joseph de Maistre et la Tour de Babel’ in Joseph de Maistre: Dossier H (2005); ‘Critique de l’écriture comme signe de décadence et de corruption,’ Revue des études maistriennes, 14 (2004); ‘Joseph de Maistre and the Universal Language of the Church,’ The European Journal (2002); ‘Language and Revolution’ in Joseph de Maistre’s Life, Thought, and Influence: Selected Studies (2001). In 2001, Thurston was awarded a Leverhulme grant to do post-doctoral research at the Université Paris- Sorbonne (Paris IV) into biblical discourses in early nineteenth-century French literature. He has written studies of apocalyptic literature during the Consulate and First Empire, the evolution of biblical rhetoric between 1815 and 1830, and Chateaubriand’s use of biblical language and ideas in Le génie du christianisme. He is currently Head of Modern Languages at Charterhouse. vi Editors’ Note OC is the abbreviation used throughout this volume for Œuvres complètes de Joseph de Maistre (14 vols., Lyon, 1884-1887). The Archives de Joseph de Maistre et de sa famille cited in this volume correspond to the files of the CD-ROM collection of the Fonds de Maistre, Archives départementales de la Savoie, 1996. In footnotes some dates are given in both Old Style and New Style, reflecting Maistre’s presence in Russia. vii 1 Introduction: assessing Maistre’s style and rhetoric Richard A. Lebrun I That the works of Joseph de Maistre have continued to hold sway over both scholars and the general public can be attributed in large part to his abilities as a writer. Certainly, the contents of his thought – mention can be made to his critique of the Enlightenment, his counter-revolutionary attitudes, his defense of monarchy and Catholicism, his ultramontanism, and his sociology – possess enduring interest for historians given their innovativeness in their own time, and their continuing relevance in ours. However Maistre’s ability to mould the French language into a new, lively, memorable, and distinctive literary style has also contributed significantly to the influence of his thought. Varied and surprising critics and stylists, from Sainte-Beuve to Walter Benjamin, have been attracted to Maistre precisely because of his aesthetic