Napoleon and the Legacy of Glory
Publisher
:
PUF
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782130547938
Number of pages
:
255
Description
When Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power right after the French Revolution, his clever recasting of the concept of glory served as the basis for a new patriotic awakening in the empire he was building. Now the divide between the old regime and the revolution, the antagonistic values of virtue and self-interest, heroism and equality, could be reconciled. In Napoleon’s view, glory is egalitarian because it rewards the most valorous citizens, without any consideration of rank, and it is also distinctive, since it creates a true natural aristocracy based on merit.
In Napoleon and the Legacy of Glory, Robert Morrissey shows how Napoleonic glory was built to last. The ideas Napoleon promulgated could be traced back to Greek and Roman symposia. Concepts he valued were shaped by the first Christian thinkers, then reinterpreted in the Renaissance, and again by the spiritual forebears of Napoleon, the authors of the Enlightenment. Over time, Napoleon’s concept of glory was transformed into an ideology all its own, capable of winning over the profit-oriented “market” model that arose from the industrial revolution.
Morrissey poses two important questions: Can a lasting political legitimacy be based on glory? And, if so, can Napoleon’s logic survive the loss of his empire and his miserable exile? For Morrissey, the answers to both questions are a qualified yes. He finds that the political doctrine, as developed in Napoleon’s memoir Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, gave rise to a particular concept of glory, a concept that formed a turning point in the history of ideas and contributed significantly to the formation of European civilization.
Author
Robert John Morrissey : Robert Morrissey is a professor of literature and cultural history at the University of Chicago. A specialist in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French history, literature, and critical theory, his publications include Charlemagne and France (Gallimard, 1997; University of Notre Dame Press, 2003) and a critical edition of Rousseau’s Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire (Flammarion, 2006).
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