Patrick Boucheron, Conjurer la peur, Sienne, 1338: Essai sur la force politique des images. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2013. Paper. Pp. 286; many color figures. €33. ISBN: 978-2-02-113499-5
There seem to be two ways to write about Sigmaringen, the German town where an incapacitated Vich... more There seem to be two ways to write about Sigmaringen, the German town where an incapacitated Vichy government landed in September 1944. The first is to cast the town as the site of an operetta, a fantasy world in which the Vichy government is seen as nothing more than a spectacle, a parodic version of its former self. The second option consists in describing Sigmaringen as a ghost town, a phantasmal city with its haunted castle frequented, for a period of 8 months, by the shadows of the men who had ruled France for four years. Historians today, as well as eye-witnesses of the time, Vichy journalists in exile, and novelists, all turn to a language of operetta and ghosts to describe Sigmaringen. While these metaphoric systems tell of the demise of a regime, they also ask us to reflect on the forms the past takes when it revisits the present. Sigmaringen has a particular status among the sites of memory of the Second World War. As with Oradour-sur-Glanes or the Glieres Plateau, though perhaps to a lesser extent, the German town remains one of the memorable sites of France's war, remembered in historical studies and tour guides alike. It is invested with the will to remember that makes it a "presence of the past" in France's present, to retain Pierre Nora's phrase (20). At the same time, however, perhaps precisely because it is outside of France's borders and because it represents France's treasonous past, Sigmaringen remains today on the margins of the nation's collective memory; it has never become the site of an official, or even officious, commemoration. Sigmaringen remains between two worlds. It is both present and strangely absent, a transitional realm between France and Germany, between Main's reign and his demise, between the Occupation and the postwar period, between Vichy and the Vichy syndrome. Always men
For Robert Brentano, Gene Brucker, and Natalie Zemon Davis-Masters of the Archives A lot of us ha... more For Robert Brentano, Gene Brucker, and Natalie Zemon Davis-Masters of the Archives A lot of us have been concerned lately with theories and practices of authenticating the pasta reaction, among other things, to the stark choice between relativizing and essentializing dogmas that confront us, or are said to confront us, in the academy and even in real life. To such abstract certainties, my response has been to investigate how the authenticity of texts and artifacts has actually been established or invalidated, over time, by such fundamental authenticating institutions as the library, the museum, and the archives. These are repositories of record where evidentiary credentials are checked and claims to knowledge about the past are actually tested, not just talked about. For historical understanding, these repositories have become surrogates of God, and of the devil too. Archives have existed in one form or another since the beginnings of recorded history-they are one condition of having a historical record in the first place. But it is only since the nineteenth century that archives have been primary sites of the labor and legitimacy of professional historians, their equivalent of laboratories or fieldwork. Most historians still suffer professional rites of passage in the archives as ordained by Leopold von Ranke and the founding fathers of the modern discipline of history; nonarchival historians are likely to feel at least
Architectural Imitations: Reproductions and Pastiches in East and West
... Tradition depends on it; so does plagiarism. ... What if we start with imitation trumping pre... more ... Tradition depends on it; so does plagiarism. ... What if we start with imitation trumping preservation in principle as well as practice? ... He is quite single-minded in censuring the Romantic legacyparticularly its cult of originality and towering condescensionthat, as he sees it ...
Renaissance Quarterly (1967-) and on to digits and pixels; from scores of members it has grown to... more Renaissance Quarterly (1967-) and on to digits and pixels; from scores of members it has grown to thousands, from early meetings with one or two sessions this Annual Meeting boasts a burgeoning program and registration fees to match. Regional Renaissance associations, Renaissance teaching programs, and international affiliates are represented here; the book exhibit tables offer hundreds of books and journals. Meanwhile, the public Renaissance is booming to the mingled satisfaction and alarm of the academic Renaissance. The hotel we are meeting in belongs to the "Renaissance" chain, with branches in Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Amsterdam, and Las Vegas. Renaissance is a brand, label, and logo: it's in the movies and mystery thrillers with a Renaissance hook (The Da Vinci Code is just the scum on the froth). We have Renaissance television documentaries and docudramas with talking heads, who, fortunately for them, have tenure. We have Renaissance Faires and Reenactments, Living Last Suppers, Renaissance Weekend Conferences, and neocon think tanks where Machiavelli rules. Shakespeare, from "Schlockspeare" to scholarly studies and crossover books written for a seemingly insatiable public, is a multinational consortium. 3 John Addington Symonds must have had it right when he proclaimed the Renaissance "the most marvelous period the world has ever known." 4 Not least because it has been pronounced dead so often. Not counting the medievalists' longstanding professional disdain, its passing had the solemn authority of William Bouwsma's American Historical Association Presidential Address in 1978. As if to confirm the bad news, in 1996 the scholarly quarterly Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies became the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Just last year Monty Python's Terry Jones gave the Renaissance a pop burial. While allowing that the Renaissance had never done him any harm personally, he said he was sick and tired of people putting on airs about it and wished it good riddance. 5 We can deny such exaggerated rumors, as Mark Twain did of his own demise not far from this spot. For one thing, they are partly the wages of success. As old and new hands at these meetings know, the big tent of 3 In a nice coincidence the San Francisco meeting coincided with the publication of Grendler, in which the veteran Renaissance scholar meets and documents the Public Renaissance in all its brazen glory. The essays in Burt offer a searching academic guide to the mediatized Shakespeare.
Uploads
Papers by Randolph Starn