Hippolyte Taine
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| - | '''Hippolyte Adolphe Taine''' ([[April 21]], [[1828]] - [[March 5]], [[1893]]) was a [[France|French]] [[critic]] and [[historian]]. He was the chief theoretical influence of [[French naturalism]], a major proponent of [[sociological positivism]], and one of the first practitioners of [[historicism|historicist]] criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. Taine is particularly remembered for his three-pronged approach to the contextual study of a work of art, based on the aspects of what he called '''[[race]], [[milieu]], and [[moment]]'''. | + | '''Hippolyte Taine''' (1828 - 1893) was a [[French critic]] and [[historian]], the chief theoretical influence of [[French naturalism]], a major proponent of [[sociological positivism]], and one of the first practitioners of [[historicism|historicist]] criticism. Taine is particularly remembered for his three-pronged approach to the contextual study of a work of art, based on the aspects of what he called '''[[race]], [[milieu]], and [[moment]]'''. |
| Taine had a profound effect on [[French literature]]; the [[1911 Encyclopedia Britannica]] asserted that "the tone which pervades the works of [[Zola]], [[Bourget]] and [[Maupassant]] can be immediately attributed to the influence we call Taine's." | Taine had a profound effect on [[French literature]]; the [[1911 Encyclopedia Britannica]] asserted that "the tone which pervades the works of [[Zola]], [[Bourget]] and [[Maupassant]] can be immediately attributed to the influence we call Taine's." | ||
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"Here is the real man, namely, that group of faculties and of sentiments which produces the rest. Behold a new world, an infinite world; for each visible action involves an infinite train of reasonings and emotions, new or old sensations which have combined to bring this into light and which, like long ledges of rock sunk deep in the earth, have cropped out above the surface and attained their level. It is this subterranean world which forms the second aim, the special object of the historian."--History of English Literature (1864) Hippolyte Taine Alternative translation: "The genuine man, I mean that mass of faculties and feelings which are produced by the inner man. We have reached a new world, which is infinite, because every action which we see involves an infinite association of reasonings, emotions, sensations new and old, which have served to bring it to light, and which, like great rocks deep- seated in. the ground, find in it their end and their level. This underworld is a new subject-matter, proper to the historian."--History of English Literature (1864) Hippolyte Taine |
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Hippolyte Taine (1828 - 1893) was a French critic and historian, the chief theoretical influence of French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism, and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Taine is particularly remembered for his three-pronged approach to the contextual study of a work of art, based on the aspects of what he called race, milieu, and moment.
Taine had a profound effect on French literature; the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica asserted that "the tone which pervades the works of Zola, Bourget and Maupassant can be immediately attributed to the influence we call Taine's."
Race, milieu and moment
Taine is best known now for his attempt at a scientific account of literature, based on the categories of race, milieu, and moment. Taine used these words in French (race, milieu et moment); the terms have become widespread in literary criticism in English, but are used in this context in senses closer to the French meanings of the words than the English meanings, which are, roughly, "nation", "environment" or "situation", and "time".
Taine argued that literature was largely the product of the author's environment, and that an analysis of that environment could yield a perfect understanding of the work of literature. In this sense he was a sociological positivist (see Auguste Comte), though with important differences. Taine did not mean race in the specific sense now common, but rather the collective cultural dispositions that govern everyone without their knowledge or consent. What differentiates individuals within this collective "race", for Taine, was milieu: the particular circumstances that distorted or developed the dispositions of a particular person. The "moment" is the accumulated experiences of that person, which Taine often expressed as momentum; to some later critics, however, Taine's conception of moment seemed to have more in common with Zeitgeist.
Though Taine coined and popularized the phrase "race, milieu, et moment," the theory itself has roots in earlier attempts to understand the aesthetic object as a social product rather than a spontaneous creation of genius. Taine seems to have drawn heavily on the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder's ideas of volk (people) and nation in his own concept of race; the Spanish writer Emilia Pardo Bazán has suggested that a crucial predecessor to Taine's idea was the work of Germaine de Staël on the relationship between art and society.
Major works
Taine's principal works, in chronological order, are:
- De personis Platonicis. Essai sur les fables de La Fontaine (1853)
- Essai sur Tite-Live (1854)
- Voyage aux eaux des Pyrénées (1855)
- Les philosophes français du XIXe siècle (1856)
- Essais de critique et d'histoire (1857)
- La Fontaine et ses fables (1860)
- Histoire de la littérature anglaise, 4 vol. L'idéalisme anglais, étude sur Carlyle. Le positivisme anglais, étude sur Stuart Mill (1864)
- Les écrivains anglais contemporains. Nouveaux essais de critique et d'histoire. *Philosophie de l'art (1865)
- Philosophie de l'art en Italie. Voyage en Italie (1866)
- Notes sur Paris. L'idéal dans l'art (1867)
- Philosophie de l'art dans les Pays-Bas (1868)
- Philosophie de l'art en Grèce (1869)
- De l'intelligence (2 vol., 1870)
- Du suffrage universel et de la manière de voter. Un séjour en France de 1792 à 1795. Notes sur l'Angleterre (1871)
- Origines de la France contemporaine (1876–1894):
- Vol. I: L'ancien régime
- Vols. II through IV: La Révolution
- Vols. V and VI: Le Régime moderne
- Derniers essais de critique et d'histoire (1894)
See also
