The Life of an Unknown – The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker in Nineteenth–Century France (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism) - Hardcover

Corbin, Alain

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231118406 ISBN 13: 9780231118408

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2001

Synopsis

[ The Life of an Unknown: The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker in Nineteenth-Century France By ( Author ) Jun-2001 Hardcover

About this title

Review:

A splendid job...put[s] flesh on the bones of a small society and a corner of France that stand out more clearly thanks to his work.--Eugen Weber "American Historical Review "

Corbin puts the pieces of this lifetime together in a way that is rich in insight.--Theresa M. McBride "The Historian "

This work is a product of a renowned historian's quest to study ordinary people instead of elites... Arguing that the current social history of ordinary people is based on the traces left by very unusual people who are wrongly taken to be spokesmen for the rest, Corbin seeks to rectify this by studying someone so obscure, unimportant, and anonymous as to be totally unremembered.--Iorweth Prothero "Labour/Le Travail "

An outstanding example of 'speculative history'from one of France's greatest social and cultural historians.... Masterfully translated by Arthur Goldhammer, this work will be particularly fascinating for all those who are willing to accept its speculative aspects and who appreciate the possibilities of imaginative history written with honesty and grace.--Choice

Corbin has achieved a scholarly triumph.--Publishers Weekly

Synopsis:

"My task is piecing together a puzzle...I hope to reconstitute the existence of a person whose memory has been abolished...I want to re-create him, to give him a second chance...to become part of the memory of his century."With these words, Alain Corbin embarks on a journey that is part history and part metaphysics: recreating the life and world of a man about whom nothing is known except for his entries in the civil registries and historical knowledge about the times in which he lived. Risen from death and utter obscurity is Louis-Francois Pinagot, a forester and clog maker who lived during the heart of the nineteenth century -- the age of Romanticism, of Hugo and Berlioz -- from the Napoleonic Wars to the Third Republic.The result is a fascinating picture of the way people lived along the forest's edge during this tumultuous and eventful time in the history of France -- and of the world. How did the residents of this unique community live and work together? How did life in the village differ from life in the forest? How did the church and various governments of France affect the everyday lives of these people, and of Pinagot in particular?With The Life of an Unknown, Alain Corbin presents a full record of a life, comprised of supposition, with room for each reader to insert his/her own imaginings onto the scene.

Ambitious in its aims and exquisite in its execution, The Life of an Unknown is nothing short of a bold and successful attempt by a master to correct historians' all-too-common neglect of those relegated to oblivion with the passage of time.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0231118406
• ISBN 13: 9780231118408
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 294