The 'I' of History

Vivian Kogan examines the poetics of Jules Michelet's self-portraiture as it intersects with the nation and history. History exists because someone tells the story. In Michelet's unique staging and performance of the past, the way the story is told is the story. Long before Charles de Gaulle, Michelet asserted that he "was" France. His self-representation as the "I" of the nation and the embodiment of history ("moi-histoire") takes form as a rhetorical personification that shapes the historian's writing. Offering a new multidisciplinary perspective, Kogan both exposes Michelet's vision of France, his grand narrative, and demystifies that narrative in the analysis of Michelet's final text, "History of the Nineteenth Century".