Guest lecture Kristian Raum 28.01.20
Is it possible to reconstruct the emotional life of past eras? Can a work as multifaceted and contradictory as that of Queen Marguerite de Navarre serve as a key to the intellectual world of people in the 16th century? This question preoccupied the French historian Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) and led him, together with Marc Bloch (1886-1944), to innovative research approaches that are still effective today.
The lecture and the subsequent discussion traced Febvre's cognitive process and examined the role of literary texts for historiographical questions. Starting with Amour sacré, amour profane, published in 1944 under the conditions of occupation, the question was also explored as to how Febvre's historiographical texts themselves are constructed and - beyond the 16th century - become a mirror of their own time of origin and their readership.