Peasant and French
Peasant and French
Peasant and French examines the relationship between French peasants and the development of the French national identity during the nineteenth century. Drawing on methods from cultural studies and social history and a broad range of literary and archival sources, Lehning argues that modern France has in part defined itself as different from the peasantry. Rather than seeing rural French history as a process in which peasants lose their identities and become French, he views it as an ongoing process of cultural contact in which both peasants and the French nation negotiate their identities in relation to the other. The book suggests a new kind of rural history that places the countryside in its national context rather than in isolation.
- Revision of standard interpretation of nineteenth-century French rural history, especially vis-à-vis Eugene Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen
- Utilizes methods drawn from both the new social history and more recent approaches from cultural studies
Reviews & endorsements
'... the book provides some valuable appraisals of perceptions of peasent life and offers an excellent bibliography'. Hugh Clout, The Agricultural History Review
Product details
June 1995Paperback
9780521467704
256 pages
235 × 157 × 14 mm
0.366kg
16 b/w illus. 10 tables
Available
.jpg)
.jpg)
Table of Contents
- 1. Introductory positions
- 2. The French nation and its peasants
- 3. The landscape in the early nineteenth century
- 4. Changes in the landscape
- 5. Gender, places, people
- 6. The ambiguities of schooling
- 7. Inside the parish church
- 8. A new site: electoral politics
- 9. Conclusion: towards a new rural history.
