Images of Antiquity in the intellectual heritage of François Guizot

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to study the images of antiquity and the reception of the classical heritage in the scholarly studies of François Guizot (1787–1874) — a famous French historian of the Restoration period and a leading politician during the July Monarchy. His approach is characterized by the idea of an inextricable link, of the continuity between the old and the new France, ancient Gaul and France of the nineteenth century. For him, between the classical heritage was the matrix of modern French civilization and of European civilization as a whole. At the same time, on the basis of Guizot's works, one may trace, on the one hand, a certain diminution of interest in the classical intellectual heritage and some disappointment in it, and, on the other, the growing attention to the boundary between antiquity and the Middle Ages. The present article is devoted to the study of these urgent issues.