Lucien Febvre

Lucien Febvre
Annales School
Children	3

Lucien Paul Victor Febvre (

.

Biography

Lucien Febvre was born and brought up in

, who shared Febvre's philosophical and political approach, which brought the two men together.

The time Febvre spent in Paris played an enormous role in reshaping his outlook on the world. Prevalent approaches to art, philosophy and modern ways of thinking strongly influenced Febvre. He embraced 20th century modernism to the extent that he later claimed to have become "untuned" from the old world and the old ways of thinking.

In his approach to history, Febvre contextualized events against the geography, psychology and culture of the times about which he wrote. History as a mere collection of historical facts no longer held any interest for Febvre.

Early work

Febvre's first thesis on

Annales School

" and would become a new way of historical thinking.

Another influential work of Febvre dealt with Protestantism. Published in the Revue Historique in 1929, "Une question mal posée" attempted to study popular religion by trying to observe and quantify human behavior. Through an enormous amount of research, Febvre collected information from various monasteries and chapels to study the influence of new wave philosophy in religion and the clergy's approach to understanding and translating their views to lay people. Through this work, Febvre became very involved in the field of ethnology, a field of study that quantifies human behavior. Some critics consider this work to be heavily influenced by Febvre's own views of the surrounding world.

As time went by, Febvre grew increasingly suspicious of theology. He refused to see people as bound by forces beyond their control. He came to the view that religion and old ways of thinking were impractical, maybe even dangerous, in modern times. "In the general confusion of our time," Febvre wrote, "old ideas refuse to die and still find acceptance with the mass of the population." He became convinced that changing religious views and attitudes is as difficult as trying to influence the outcome of any sort of political or social upheavals. He believed that people needed to be educated in order to avoid the dangers of the old ways of thinking.

Annales

In 1929, Lucien Febvre, along with his colleague and close friend

(commonly known as the Annales), from which the name of their distinctive style of history was taken. The journal followed Febvre's approach to describing history. Its approach was to educate the world about the dangers of old-world thinking to avoid possible future economic and political disasters. Its purpose was to influence academic circles to "study ... the present so as to reach a profounder understanding of the past." This journal was like no other scholarly publication at that time.

The Annales was met with a very favorable critical reception and was very successful in its early years. It was in such demand that it was able to increase the frequency of its publications in 1932. However, in 1938 the journal appeared to be running its course and the publishers ceased their support.

Later life

In 1933 Febvre was appointed to a chair at the

).

Febvre died in 1956 in

.

Works by Lucien Febvre

• A Geographical Introduction to History. in collaboration with Lionel Bataillon, London 1925 (La Terre et l'évolution humaine : introduction géographique à l'histoire. Paris 1922)[1]
• Martin Luther, A Destiny. New York 1929. (Un destin. Martin Luther, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1928)^[2]
• Une Question Mal Posée, 1929.^[3]
• The Rhine: Problems of History and Economics (Le Rhin: Problèmes d'histoire et d'économie, Paris 1935) Co-authored with Albert Demangeon
• The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of
  Rabelais. trans. Beatrice Gottlieb. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass.; London, 1982. (Le problème de l'incroyance au 16e siècle : la religion de Rabelais. Albin Michel: Paris, 1942)^[4]
• The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800, co-written with Henri-Jean Martin, London 1976. (L'apparition du livre, Paris 1958)^[5]
• A New Kind of History (selected essays) (1973).^[6]

See also

• École Pratique des Hautes Études
• École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

References

• The French Review, Vol. LV, No. 4, March 1982

External links

• (in French) A short biography^{[permanent dead link]}