Ancient verses on New Ideas: Legal Tradition and the French Historical School
Donald R. Kelley
These lines by Andre Chenier famously locate the emotional thrust of romantic literature and art, but they suggest also more general fascination with past displayed writers many persuasions. They highlight one essential feature that cast mind which early nineteenth-century scholars were already beginning to call historicism was best realized, perhaps, in what, at least from 1820s, Augustin Thierry others celebrating as new history. During Restoration July Monarchy this subject much discussion pretensions. About l'histoire nouvelle Jean Sarazin marvelled 1835: restoration classes secondary races has not only rendered justice humanity been an important conquest for history.2 Not Michelet even aged Chateaubriand applauded achievements l'Mcole moderne foreign impulses had inspired it, especially through work Vico, Herder, historical school law headed Savigny.3 The novelty particular (which neither first nor, certainly, last be so-called) celebrated often exaggerated, seldom fully appreciated. It derived literary artistry narrative emphasis (fashionable then now) on social distinguished political military concerns a remote inaccessible stretches past. This shift, reflected particularly study legal institutional history, illustrated most notably, Thierry's researches into history Third Estate Michelet's Origins French Law, both launched
History and Theory