2010, Vol., No.23

Korean Review of French History 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.67

pISSN : 1229-702X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/krfh

The purpose of this study is to highlight the signification of the translation of Cicero’s De officiis. Throughout the Middle Ages, Cicero’s writings, including De officiis, were one of the main textbooks for the study of Latin grammar and of rhetoric in monastic and urban schools. They were therefore well known and highly appreciated among the medieval ‘intellectuals’. On the other hand, it is only from the 15th century that the works of Cicero were translated into French and diffused among the lay public. The De officiis was translated by Master Anjourrant Bourré, jurist from a low ranking and provincial aristocratic family in the Duchy of Orléans, at the request of Tanguy du Chastel, nobleman of Brittany who had been Grand Écuyer de France under the reign of Charles VII and was Grand Maî̂tre d’hô̂tel of Francis II, duke of Brittany until 1468. It seems that the translation was accomplished between 1461 and 1464 on the eve of the War of the Public Weal. In effect, the translator laid the emphasis on Justice and made it as a main topic of his French translation. At this time of political disturbances under Louis XI, the discontented feudal lords, particularly the duke of Brittany protested against the king's injustice. The De officiis was known then in the milieu of the aristocrats who stubbornly opposed the reform of Louis XI, king of France. It effectively gave them a theoretical foundation for the anti-royal resistance. It is significant that the surviving manuscript and printed copies of French translation are particularly distinguished in the milieux of the aristocrats in Burgundy and in Brittany. It is also interesting to note the fact that the manuscript books were circulated in Brittany through the human network of the aristocratic society by means of inheritance or of personal book loans as it is demonstrated in case of Jean de Derval. He was known as a bibliophile and related by marriage to Tannguy du Chastel. It gives an idea on the way of diffusion and of reception of Cicero's work among the artistocratic audience in Brittany.

In the Enlightenment, many thinkers like La Mettrie, Helvétius, D’Holbach, G. L. Leclerc Buffon and Maupertuis were material/naturalists labeled as mechanical or biological. Diderot was also materialist affected from D’Holbach and La Mettrie etc. But his tendency was a kind of biological materialism based on the molecular biological understanding of nature and its dynamic unity. In the intellectual development, Diderot started with naturalism, and also related it to skepticism. From this, Diderot reached atheistical materialism, and this functioned as key bases for his biological materialism. In this perspective, Diderot represented the dynamic unity-totality of nature composed by molculars as atoms. We may commonly think materialism is a monistic regulation on the things of nature and society, but Diderot’s vision has leaded to the open-minded pluralism for the understanding of the world. My purpose in this survey is to clarify the process of making materialism of Diderot and its common feature and difference. The materialism of Diderot was a theoretical and strategical instrument to achieve an ethical, moral supposition that realizes 1) to advocate human’s passion, 2) to attempt liberation from traditional beliefs and shackles of authority, 3) to deny the abstract system for the observation of fact, 4) to illuminate heterological culture and religion, 5) and finally to achieve human equality in the abstract. In his materialism, Diderot 1) focused on the evolution of man who can produce prominent acts, memory and thought with organic and cognitional function composed by ‘molecule’ implicit heterologically, 2) he elevated the sensibility as an essential element to understand and construct nature and society. The sensibility universally embedded in nature can be associated regularity, impulse, and eternal vitality with whole things in the world. And this sensibility can also be operated on all human beings, society and state, so we can say there is neither good nor evil in the dogmatical dimension. There can only be the universal morality which can furnish solidarity of all components of community with happiness based on sensitive materialism and establish socio-political principles of the equality.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the formation process of the identity of Paris as a cultural city through the statues of men of letters and artists built in public spaces from 1880 to 1914. Throughout the Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, Paris won the image as a ‘city of revolution’, a ‘city of barricades’ and ‘a city on fire’ throughout the 19th century. The Paris Commune of 1871 strengthens more this image. In the mid-19th century, Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s extensive modern renovation of Paris was in part a movement to beautify the city. But Haussmann’s city project brought strong antipathy from laborers, who constituted most of Parisian citizens. In 1870 the third republic was established, but only in 1879 Republicans fully took control. Since 1880 till the outbreak of World WarⅠ in 1914, around 150 statues were installed in streets, plazas, parks and other diverse locations in Paris. The erection of artist’s statues was mainly lead by various citizens’ committees. Such monuments refreshed people’s minds of the fact that Paris was the center of culture and arts; a city that bore, worshipped and commemorated such men of letters and artists. The statues created during this period contributed to the formation of the identity of Paris as a cultural city.