Main entry:

Sherman, Daniel J.

Title & Author:

The construction of memory in interwar France / Daniel J. Sherman.

Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Description:

414 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 333-405) and index.
Introduction: The emergence of commemoration -- Experience and memory. Narrating war ; Seeing memory ; Lasting impressions -- Bodies and names. An immense Necropolis ; Inscribing absence ; "This precious patrimony" -- Making a sacrifice. Structures ; Resources ; The broken plaque -- Seeing the signified. "A kind of anguished terror" : Salons, critics, and artists ; "An artistic character" : Prefectoral review boards and provincial standards ' "All my designs are approved" : The business of commemoration ; "So superior to Panegyrics" : Monuments and meanings -- Contested spaces. Sites of commemoration ; For God and country? ; Making it local ; Requiem for an elm tree -- Dedication. Patterns of ceremony ; The dead and the living ; The power of memory -- Epilogue. The thirties : Dying of the light ; The sixties : Memory into history? ; The nineties : Return of the repressed.

Summary:

"One of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, World War I devastated France, leaving behind battlefields littered with the remains of the dead. Daniel Sherman takes a close look at the human impact of this Great War by examining the ways in which the French remembered their veterans and war dead after the armistice. Arguing that memory is more than just a record of experience, Sherman's cultural history offers a radically new perspective on how commemoration of WWI helped to shape postwar French society and politics. Sherman shows how a wartime visual culture saturated with images of ordinary foot soldiers, together with contemporary novels, memoirs, and tourist literature, promoted a distinctive notion of combat experience.
The contrast between battlefield and home front, soldier and civilian was the basis for memory and collective gratitude. Postwar commemoration, however, also grew directly out of the long and agonized search for the remains of hundreds of thousands of missing soldiers, and the sometimes contentious debates over where to bury them. For this reason, the local monument, with its inscribed list of names and its functional resemblance to tombstones, emerged as the focal point of commemorative practice. Sherman traces every step in the process of monument building as he analyzes commemoration's competing goals--to pay tribute to the dead, to console the bereaved, and to incorporate mourners' individual memories into a larger political discourse."--Pub. description.

Resources:
Table of contents
Publisher description

ISBN:

0226752852 (alk. paper)
9780226752853 (alk. paper)
0226752860 (pbk. ; back cover)
9780226752860 (pbk. ; back cover)

Subject:

World War, 1914-1918 France Influence.
War memorials France Psychological aspects.
Memorial rites and ceremonies Social aspects France.
Guerre mondiale, 1914-1918 France Influence.
Monuments aux morts France Aspect psychologique.
Rites et cérémonies commémoratifs Aspect social France.
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Historiography
War memorials Psychological aspects
Weltkrieg
Geschichtsbewusstsein
Kriegerdenkmal
Eerste Wereldoorlog.
Herdenkingen.
Oorlogsmonumenten.
Gedenkstätte Weltkrieg I Frankreich.
Weltkrieg I Gedenkstätte Frankreich.
Kriegerdenkmal Frankreich Geschichte 20. Jh.
Soldatenfriedhof Frankreich Geschichte 20. Jh.
Geschichtsbewusstsein Weltkrieg (1914-1918) Frankreich Geschichte 1919-1940.
Kriegerdenkmal Weltkrieg (1914-1918) Frankreich.
Geschichte 1919-1940.
France History 1914-1940 Historiography.
France Histoire 1914-1940 Historiographie.
France
Frankreich
Frankreich Weltkrieg (1914-1918) Geschichtsbewusstsein Geschichte 1919-1940.
Frankreich Kriegerdenkmal Weltkrieg (1914-1918)

Form/genre:

History

Holdings:

Location: Library main 208785
Call No.: DC389 .S437 1999
Status: Available