Georges Duby

Georges Michel Claude Duby , born the October 7th 1919 with Paris and deceased the December 3rd 1996 close to Aix-en-Provence, is a historian French specialist in the Moyen-âge, period of which it largely contributed to renew knowledge.

Biography

Resulting from a family of craftsmen Paris iens, it makes its studies with Mâcon and is prize winner of the open Competition of drawing. Incorporated letters in 1942, it starts a career in teaching. Named attending the Faculty of letters of the University of Lyon to the Release, he teaches some time with Besancon then obtains the pulpit of medieval history to the Faculty of letters of Aix-en-Provence in 1951, area where he is established then definitively.

Duby supports in 1953 with the Sorbonne a thesis of Doctorat arts under the direction of Charles-Edmond Perrin, entitled the Company with 11th and 12th centuries in the area mâconnaise . It can use there the extraordinary mass of documents of the Abbaye of Cluny to define the personality and to explain “at bottom” a particular space, Built it, retaining in that the lesson of the regional monographs produced then by the French geographical school.

The honors are decreed to him after a few years of teaching and several publications remarkable. In 1970, it occupies the pulpit of history of the medieval companies to the Collège de France (which it leaves in 1972). A few years later, in 1974, he is elected with the Académie of the inscriptions and the humanities as an ordinary member. He finally succeeds in 1987 Marcel Arland the twenty-sixth armchair of the French Academy.

Its work

Georges Duby knew at the beginning of his career to renew the perception of the Middle Ages while adopting from the original points of view. Its meeting with the geography is important in its training of historian. It is then, at the end of the years 1940, according to its words, a discipline where one is “most attentive with what occurred moreover nine among the social sciences”. This filiation (Alex, Roger Dion) leads it to study the medieval history but still to more take into account the landscapes and the rural companies of this time. More particularly specialist in 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries in Western Europe, Duby contributes throughout his works to renew the methods and the objects of the historical discipline. Author of vast studies ( Warlike and country in 1973, Europe in the Middle Ages in 1979), it pushes his research even further on the medieval company while beginning again celebrates it trifonctionnality of Georges Dumézil ( three orders or the imaginary one of feudalism in 1978) while knowing to renew the prototype of the historical event in a book today celebrates by the apparent paradox which it affirms in his title, celebration of the event certainly but especially analyzes masterly of its environment and its consequences, the Battle of Bouvines published in 1973.

By its work, it belongs, as Fernand Braudel which he admired, with the second generation of historians of the school of Annals, founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. In addition to his interest not contradicted for the Geography raised higher, Georges Duby also illustrates himself by his control of the French language and by appearances with the Télévision, within the framework of emissions of popularization inspired by his writings, like the Time of the cathedrals (1976), or within the framework of debates.

Georges Duby brought much to the renewal comprehension of the Histoire thanks to the concept of mental representation. With other thinkers, like Marc Trough in Anthropology, he recognized and clarified the function of the representation in the constitution of the orders and the social reports/ratios, the orientation of the collective behaviors and the transformation of the social world. In connection with the imaginary one of the Feudality, Georges Duby speaks about the representation like “frame”, “structure latent”, “simple image” of the social organization ensuring the passage towards different systems symbolic systems.

Selective bibliography

Company with 11th and 12th centuries in area mâconnaise , Paris, Editions of School of High Studies in Social sciences, 1953.
Sunday of Bouvines (July 27th, 1214) , Gallimard ( Thirty days which made France ), Paris, 1973 (ISBN 2070322955). Duby shows there that a historian of the Annales also can, on the occasion, to deal with event.
the Year Millet , Julliard, Paris, 1974 (ISBN 2-07-032774-4)
the Time of the cathedrals. Art and the company (980-1420) , Gallimard, Paris, 1976 (Grand Prix Gobert 1977) (ISBN 207029286X)
Three Orders or the imaginary one of feudalism , Gallimard, Paris, 1978 (ISBN 2070286045)
the Knight, the Woman and the Priest. The Marriage in feudal France , Hatchet, Paris, 1981 (ISBN 2012790712)
Guillaume the Marshal or the best knight of the world , Beech, Paris, 1984 (ISBN 2070323447). The biography of Guillaume the Marshal, who rises in the feudal hierarchy by his gifts until becoming one of the men more powerful of the kingdom of England.
History of the private life , in joint management with Philippe Ariès (5 vol.), the Threshold, Paris, 1985, ISBN 2-02-008987-4

T. 1, Of the Roman Empire at the year millet , ISBN 2-02-008986-6
T. 2, Of feudal Europe to the Rebirth , ISBN 2-02-008992-0
T. 3, Of the Rebirth to the Lights , ISBN 2-02-009293-X
T. 4, Of the Revolution to the Great War , ISBN 2-02-009455-X
T. 5, Of the First World War at our days, ISBN 2-02-009679-X

world Historic atlas , Larousse, Paris, 2000,350 pages (ISBN 2035050448).
the History continues , Éditions Odile Jacob, 2001, ISBN 2738110428

Note: An exhaustive list of works of Duby is available on the site of the French Academy.

rural French history , in joint management with Armand Wallon (4 vol.), the Threshold, Paris, 1976

See too

social Representation
Representation

External bonds

Georges Duby, historian esthète of the Middle Ages in the magazine Label France (March 1997)
Biographical note of the French Academy
Response of Alain Peyrefitte to the speech of reception of Duby to the French Academy (1988)
Praise of Duby per Jean-Marie Rouart at the time of her speech of reception (1998)