Hippolyte Taine

Hippolyte Taine
Born
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine

(1828-04-21)21 April 1828
Vouziers, France
Died5 March 1893(1893-03-05) (aged 64)
Paris, France
NationalityFrench
Academic background
Alma materÉcole Normale Supérieure
Academic work
School or traditionConservatism
Naturalism
Positivism
Main interestsPhilosophy of art · History of France · Political philosophy
Signature

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (French pronunciation: [ipɔlit adɔlf tɛn], 21 April 1828 – 5 March 1893) was a French historian, critic and philosopher. He was the chief theoretical influence on French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him.[1] Taine is also remembered for his attempts to provide a scientific account of literature.

Taine had a profound effect on French literature; the 1911 Encyclopædia 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."[2] Out of the trauma of 1871, Taine has been said by one scholar to have "forged the architectural structure of modern French right-wing historiography."[3]

  1. ^ Kelly, R. Gordon (1974). "Literature and the Historian". American Quarterly. 26 (2): 141–159. doi:10.2307/2712232. JSTOR 2712232.
  2. ^ Baring, Maurice (1911). "Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 360–363.
  3. ^ Susanna Barrows. Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-century France. New Haven: Yale U, 1981, p.83

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