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THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS CONTEXTS
Ego-histories of France and

the Second World War
Writing Vichy
Edited by Manuel Bragança
and Fransiska Louwagie
The Holocaust and its Contexts
Series Editors
Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann
Loughborough University
Loughborough, UK
Ben Barkow
The Wiener Library
London, UK
More than sixty years on, the Holocaust remains a subject of intense
debate with ever-widening ramifications. This series aims to demonstrate
the continuing relevance of the Holocaust and related issues in con-
temporary society, politics and culture; studying the Holocaust and its
history broadens our understanding not only of the events themselves
but also of their present-day significance. The series acknowledges and
responds to the continuing gaps in our knowledge about the events that
constituted the Holocaust, the various forms in which the Holocaust has
been remembered, interpreted and discussed, and the increasing impor-
tance of the Holocaust today to many individuals and communities.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14433
Manuel Bragança · Fransiska Louwagie
Editors
Ego-histories of
France and the Second
World War
Writing Vichy
Editors
Manuel Bragança Fransiska Louwagie
University College Dublin University of Leicester
Dublin, Ireland Leicester, UK
The Holocaust and its Contexts

ISBN 978-3-319-70859-1 ISBN 978-3-319-70860-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70860-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017961116
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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Acknowledgements
This volume is the result of a two-day international workshop held in

Belfast in January 2015 and the editors would first like to thank the fol-
lowing associations and societies that supported this event: the British
Academy/Leverhulme, the Association for the Study of Modern and
Contemporary France (ASMCF), the Society for the Study of French
History (SSFH), the Society for French Studies (SFS), the Institute for
Collaborative Research in the Humanities in Belfast, the Department
of Modern Languages and the Research Office at the University of
Leicester, and the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies. Thank you also to all external participants to the workshop for
their contributions, in particular Ludivine Broch, Daniel Lee and Bill
Kidd.
Many scholars helped us in this journey. Margaret Atack, Claire
Gorrara, Olaf Jensen and Crawford Gribben very kindly agreed to com-
ment on the book proposal. Renée Poznanski and Peter Tame pro-
vided very useful feedback on early drafts of the introduction and the
conclusion. Many thanks also to Michelle Harrison for her assistance
with proofreading, to Emily Russell and Carmel Kennedy from Palgrave
Macmillan for their support and advice, to Mani Kalyanasundaram from
Springer for his assistance and patience, and, of course, to the series edi-
tors, Chris Szejnmann and Ben Barkow, for their interest in this project.
Heartfelt thanks to Monique Decroos for kindly giving us permission to
use one of her paintings for the book cover and to Robert O. Paxton for
taking the time to answer some questions about his own ego-history and
v
vi Acknowledgements
career. And we have a debt of gratitude to Peter Tame for his invaluable
help with the translations of several chapters into English.
Last but not least, we would like to thank all the contributors to this
volume for their trust, their patience and for the fascinating texts that are
gathered here. It was a pleasure corresponding with you all over the last
couple of years.
Contents
Part I Opening Reflections
Introduction: Ego-histories,
France and the Second World War 3
Manuel Bragança and Fransiska Louwagie
Interview with Robert O. Paxton, on the Writing

of History and Ego-history 19
Robert O. Paxton, Manuel Bragança and Fransiska Louwagie
Part II Voices from France
Currents and Counter-Currents 25

Marc Dambre
Resisting Fragments 45
Laurent Douzou
On Chance and Necessity 67

Denis Peschanski
vii
viii Contents
From a Foreign Country 89

Henry Rousso
Part III Voices Across the Channel
In the Forests of the Night: England, France

and the Writing of War 107
Margaret K. Atack
Searching for ‘Contact Zones’ in France’s War 127

Hilary Footitt
A Tale of Two Frances and a Curious Ancestor 145

Robert Gildea
Vichy, Kingdom of Shadows 165

Christopher Lloyd
Writers in Conflict 181

Peter Tame
Part IV Voices from Far and Near
Good Fortune, Good Friends 201

Richard J. Golsan
The Other Side: Investigating the Collaborationists

in World War II France 219
Bertram M. Gordon
When Faced with the Question 243

Colin Nettelbeck
Born in Paris… 267

Renée Poznanski
Contents ix
Reaching Vichy via Budapest: On Zigzags, Waves

and Triangles in Intellectual Life 283
Susan R. Suleiman
Part V Closing Reflections
Conclusion: Cross-Perspectives on Ego-history 299

Index 317
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Dr Manuel Bragança is Assistant Professor in the School of Languages,

Cultures and Linguistics at University College Dublin where he is also a
member of the Centre for War Studies and of the Humanities Institute.
His research interests focus on the historiography and memories of the
Second World War in France and Europe. He is an editor of the online
research platform H-France and an assistant editor of the journal Open
Cultural Studies.
Dr Fransiska Louwagie is Lecturer in French Studies at the University

of Leicester where she is also affiliated with the Stanley Burton Centre
for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Her main research focus is on
Holocaust testimony and post-Holocaust literature in French. She also
works on diasporic literature, self-translation and bande dessinée. She has
co-edited, with Anny Dayan Rosenman, Un ciel de sang et de cendres.
Piotr Rawicz et la solitude du témoin (2013) and, with Kirsten Malmkjær
and Adriana Serban, Key Cultural Texts in Translation (2018).
xi
xii Editors and Contributors
Contributors
Margaret K. Atack is Professor of French at the University of Leeds.

Author of Literature and the French Resistance (1989) and May 68 in
French Fiction and Film (1999), she has written widely on the literature
and culture of France in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, includ-
ing, most recently, the edited volumes: War and Occupation 1940–1944:
Other Stories/Stories of Otherness (2011), Framing Narratives of the
Second World War in France (2012, with Christopher Lloyd), and French
Feminisms 1975 and After (2017, with Alison Fell, Diana Holmes and
Imogen Long).
Marc Dambre is Emeritus Professor of French Literature at the
University of Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle (‘Thalim’ mixed research unit
7172: CNRS/ENS/Sorbonne Nouvelle). His research focuses on the
links between French history and literature from the 1940s onwards
and, more specifically, on right-wing writers and contemporary literature.
He is the author of Roger Nimier, Hussard du demi-siècle (1989) and
has edited many related volumes, including Drieu la Rochelle (1995),
Les Hussards (2000), L’Exception et la France contemporaine (2010,
with R. J. Golsan) and Mémoires occupées (2013, with R. J. Golsan and
C. D. Lloyd). He also edited Roger Nimier’s correspondence with Paul
Morand, in 2015.
Laurent Douzou is Professor of History at Sciences Po Lyon and
Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His research
focuses on the history of the French Resistance during the Second World
War and he is the author of La Désobéissance. Histoire d’un mouvement et
d’un journal clandestins, 1940–1944 (1995), La Résistance française: une
histoire périlleuse (2005), Lucie Aubrac (2009) and La Résistance. Une
morale en action (2010).
Hilary Footitt is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of
Modern Languages and European Studies at the University of Reading.
She has written widely on Franco-British relations in the Second World
War and the immediate post-war period. Her publications include France
1943–1945: Politics of Liberation (1988); War and Liberation in France:
Living with the Liberators (2004); and WarTalk: Foreign Languages and
the British War Effort in Europe 1940–1947 (2013). She was Principal
Investigator for the major AHRC project ‘Languages at War: policies
Editors and Contributors xiii
and practices of language contacts in conflict’ and is currently Principal

Investigator for the AHRC project ‘The Listening Zones of NGOs: lan-
guages and cultural knowledge in development programmes’.
Robert Gildea is Professor of Modern History at the University of
Oxford. His publications include Education in Provincial France. A
Study of Three Departments, 1800–1914 (1983), The Past in French
History (1994), Marianne in Chains. In Search of the German
Occupation (2002), Children of the Revolution (2008) and Fighters
in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (2015). He has
co-edited Surviving Hitler and Mussolini. Daily Life in Occupied Europe
(2006) and Europe’s 1968. Voices of Revolt (2013).
Richard J. Golsan is University Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M
University and the Editor of South Central Review. He is the author,
among other works, of Vichy’s Afterlife: History and Counterhistory in
Postwar France (2000), French Writers and the Politics of Complicity
(2006) and The Vichy Past in France Today: Corruptions of Memory (2017).
He recently co-edited, with Sarah M. Misemer, The Trial That Never Ends:
Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem in Retrospect (2017).
Bertram M. Gordon is Professor of History at Mills College in
Oakland, California, USA. He is the author of Collaborationism in
France During the Second World War (1980), the editor of The Historical
Dictionary of World War II France: The Occupation, Vichy and the
Resistance, 1938–1946 (1998) and the co-editor of Food and France:
What Food Studies Can Teach Us About History, a special issue of French
Historical Studies, 38:2 (April 2015). His book, With Camera and
Guidebook: Tourism in France and the Second World War, will be pub-
lished in 2018. He is General Secretary of the International Commission
for the History of Travel and Tourism.
Christopher Lloyd is Professor of French at Durham University. As
well as studies of J.-K. Huysmans, Maupassant and Octave Mirbeau,
his book-length publications related to war and conflict include:
Marcel Aymé: Uranus and La Tête des autres (1994); Resistance and
Collaboration in Occupied France (2003); Henri-Georges Clouzot (2007);
Framing Narratives of the Second World War and Occupation in France
(co-edited with Margaret Atack, 2012); Mémoires occupées: fictions
françaises et Seconde Guerre mondiale (co-edited with Marc Dambre and
Richard J. Golsan, 2013).
xiv Editors and Contributors
Colin Nettelbeck is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of

Melbourne. Educated at the University of Adelaide and the Sorbonne,
he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Monash University
and the University of Melbourne. He is the author of numerous books,
book chapters and articles on modern and contemporary French cultural
history, with a particular focus on the French experience of the Second
World War. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Robert O. Paxton is the Mellon Professor Emeritus of Social Science
at Columbia University. He specialises in the social and political history
of Modern Europe, particularly Vichy France during the World War II
era. Paxton has worked on two issues within the general area of mod-
ern European history: France during the Nazi occupation of 1940–
1944; and the rise and spread of fascism. His numerous publications on
these subjects include Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (1972),
Vichy, France and the Jews (1981, with Michael Marrus), French Peasant
Fascism (1996) and The Anatomy of Fascism (2004).
Denis Peschanski is a Senior Researcher in the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and runs seminars in Paris Sorbonne
University (France) and Columbia University (USA). He has dedicated
most of his research to the history and memories of the Second World
War in France. He is particularly interested in the French Resistance
and Vichy France. He is also the scientific coordinator of MATRICE, a
memory studies project which investigates the intertwined dynamics of
individual and collective memories. With his colleague Francis Eustache,
a neuroscientist, he has launched a long-term, transdisciplinary pro-
gramme concerning the memory of November 13 (the terrorist attacks
in Paris in 2015).
Renée Poznanski is the Yaakov and Poria Avnon Professor of Holocaust
Studies in the Department of Politics and Government (Ben Gurion
University). Her book The Jews in France During World War II (1994
in French, 2001 in English) won the Jacob Buchman Prize for the
Memory of the Holocaust (Yad Vashem). Her book on the propaganda
of the Resistance and the persecution of the Jews, Propagandes et persé-
cutions. La Résistance et le “problème juif” (2008), was awarded the 2009
Henri Hertz prize by the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris. Drancy,
Un camp en France (2015), her most recent book, co-written with Denis
Peschanski, concerns the French internment camp of Drancy.
Editors and Contributors xv
Henry Rousso is Senior Research Fellow at the Institut d’Histoire du

Temps Présent, CNRS, Paris. He has dedicated his research to the his-
tory and memories of traumatic past events. His main publications are:
The Vichy Syndrome. History and Memory in France Since 1944 (1991);
Vichy, An Ever-Present Past (1998), with Éric Conan; Vichy, l’événement,
la memoire, l’histoire (2001); The Haunting Past. History, Memory, and
Justice in France (2002) and The Latest Catastrophe. History, the Present,
the Contemporary (2016).
Susan R. Suleiman is the C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the
Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature at
Harvard University. She is the author of The Némirovsky Question: The
Life, Death and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in 20th-Century France (2016)
and other books, including Crises of Memory and the Second World War
(2006); Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde (1990)
and the memoir Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook (1996).
She has edited several collective volumes, including Exile and Creativity
(1998), Contemporary Jewish Writing in Hungary (2003, with Éva
Forgács) and French Global (2010, with Christie McDonald).
Peter Tame was Reader at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern
Ireland, until his retirement in 2013. He specialises in twentieth-cen-
tury French literature and ideology. His principal publications include
La Mystique du fascisme dans l’œuvre de Robert Brasillach (1986), The
Ideological Hero (1998) and André Chamson 1900–1983: A Critical
Biography (2006). He also published Isotopias: Places and Spaces in
French War Fiction of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (2015)
and co-edited several volumes, including Mnemosyne and Mars (2013)
and The Long Aftermath (2016). He received the Grand Prix Hervé
Deluen de l’Académie Française in 2007.
List of Figures
A Tale of Two Frances and a Curious Ancestor

Fig. 1 Denis Saurat. 17 July 1940, Queen’s Hall in London 146
The Other Side: Investigating the Collaborationists
in World War II France
Fig. 1 Readers’ guide to periodical literature (https://www.ebsco.com/
products/research-databases/readers-guide-to-periodical-
literature)—listings for ‘France’ as percentage of total by
five-year periods, 1890–2013 (data collected and compiled
by Bertram M. Gordon) 236
xvii
PART I
Opening Reflections
Introduction: Ego-histories, France
and the Second World War
This volume gathers the intellectual autobiographies—or ‘ego-histories’,

in Pierre Nora’s words (1987)—of fourteen leading scholars in the
fields of history, literature, film and cultural studies who have dedi-
cated a considerable part of their career to researching the history and
memories of France during the Second World War: these are Margaret
Atack (University of Leeds), Marc Dambre (Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle),
Laurent Douzou (Lyon II), Hilary Footitt (University of Reading),
Robert Gildea (University of Oxford), Richard J. Golsan (Texas A&M
University), Bertram M. Gordon (Mills College), Christopher Lloyd
(Durham University), Colin Nettelbeck (University of Melbourne),
Denis Peschanski (Paris Sorbonne, EHESS and CNRS), Renée
Poznanski (Ben Gurion University), Henry Rousso (Paris 8 University
and CNRS), Peter Tame (Queen’s University Belfast) and Susan
M. Bragança (*)
University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
e-mail: manu.braganca@ucd.ie
F. Louwagie
University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
e-mail: fl47@le.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2018 3

M. Bragança and F. Louwagie (eds.), Ego-histories of France
and the Second World War, The Holocaust and its Contexts,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70860-7_1
4 M. Bragança and F. Louwagie
R. Suleiman (Harvard University). It also includes an interview with

historian Robert O. Paxton (Columbia University). Across their vari-
ous disciplines, these scholars have played a crucial role in shaping and
reshaping what has become a thought-provoking field of research. The
main aim of this volume is to clarify the rationales and driving forces
behind their work and, consequentially, behind our current understand-
ing of the Vichy era, which remains undoubtedly one of the darkest and
most vividly remembered pages of history in contemporary France.
French Perspectives on the History and Memories

of the Second World War
With approximately sixty million people killed or murdered, the Second

World War is indisputably a major watershed in history. The scale of
death and destruction was unprecedented and some of its most horrific
aspects were simply unbelievable for many. The events overturned
and shattered the humanistic values which had underpinned Western
thought and the belief that the world was bound to be heading towards
a better future. The sheer violence of this conflict, its inextricable links
with the Holocaust and the extreme diversity of unparalleled situa-
tions that it generated across the globe explain why the Second World
War became and remains a major historical, philosophical and cul-
tural reference. Not only have its history and memories been shaped
and preserved in countless memoirs, artifacts, archives and museums,
acquiring a central presence in contemporary thought and culture,
they have also increasingly interested scholars across the Humanities
and beyond. A widely shared public fascination with this crucial period
also demonstrates that the Second World War is not merely a phe-
nomenon confined to the past: at least in the countries most involved
in the conflict, including France, it remains a vivid if not a haunt-
ing memory. The long shadow of the Second World War still hangs
over us.
However, this long shadow takes on different forms depending on
one’s viewpoint in time and space. This is hardly surprising since, after
all, ‘World War II was not one war, but a great many small wars’, as Carl
Tighe put it (2005, 116). Prompted by past as well as present situations
and specificities, different and often diverging memories have emerged
in and across countries and communities, at distinct times and via a wide
INTRODUCTION: EGO-HISTORIES, FRANCE … 5
range of media. In France, a key turning point in the memory of the

Second World War occurred in the 1970s. Until then, Histoire de Vichy
(1954, History of Vichy), written by French historian Robert Aron, had
been the standard historical reference on the history of France during
the Second World War. In this study, Aron argued that, during the Nazi
occupation, Marshal Philippe Pétain, Head of the French State—dubbed
‘Vichy’ immediately after the arrival and installation of the French gov-
ernment in that town—had acted as a shield for the population, resisting
the occupiers’ demands as much as one possibly could. This unproblem-
atic and (conveniently) consensual version of Vichy was shattered in the
late 1960s and 1970s when several studies—by historians Henri Michel
(1966), Stanley Hoffmann (1968), Eberhard Jäckel (1968) and Robert
Paxton (1972)—demonstrated that the Vichy regime had collaborated
willingly with the Germans in order for some, like Pétain, to establish
a conservative, authoritarian and anti-Semitic regime or for others, like
Pierre Laval, to ensure that France would be well-positioned in the
nazified Europe that would emerge after the German victory.
A few works have crystallised this major historiographical and memo
rial turn. In the field of history, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order by
American historian Robert Paxton (first published in 1972, translated into
French the following year) initially generated much debate before progres-
sively being accepted by the wider scholarly community (cf. Paxton, Chapter
“Interview with Robert O. Paxton, on the Writing of History and Ego-
history”, infra). Other landmarks demonstrating this memory shift include:
the documentary Le Chagrin et la pitié (1969, The Sorrow and the Pity) by
Marcel Ophüls, which, focusing on the city of Clermont-Ferrand, illustrated
how French men and women responded in very different and evolving ways
to the Occupation, from armed resistance to armed collaboration; Patrick
Modiano’s novel La Place de l’étoile (1968, The Place of the Star), which pio-
neered what would soon be called the mode rétro, a reappraisal of the Second
World War in France through narratives that stressed the ambivalences of
the time, and not the heroism and Resistance that had so often been the fea-
tures of narratives from 1945 onwards; and Lacombe Lucien (1974) by Louis
Malle, co-written by Modiano, a feature film that may be remembered as
the most emblematic work of the aforementioned mode rétro because of the
growing influence of cinema in French culture. Paxton, Ophüls, Modiano,
Malle and many other scholars, writers and artists fundamentally challenged
prevailing or official views that the French—with the exception of a ‘hand-
ful of scoundrels’ as De Gaulle put it in a famous radio-broadcast speech
given on 8 October 1944—had actively supported or been involved in

the Resistance during the war. This dramatic and, for many French, trau-
matic historiographical and memorial turn (Temkin 2003; Rousso 1990;
Laborie 2011) inspired the following generation to stop looking out-
wards for every evil that had taken place in France during the Second
World War and, instead, encouraged them to also look inwards in order
to investigate the diverse attitudes that the French adopted and mani-
fested between 1940 and 1945, to question why it had taken almost
thirty years for the responsibility of Vichy to be recognised, and to recon-
sider the Second World War with a renewed critical gaze.
Ego-history: A ‘New Genre for a New Age of Historical

Consciousness’ or an ‘Impossible Genre’?
The term ‘ego-history’ was coined by Pierre Nora with the publication
of the collective volume Essais d’ego-histoire in 1987, which gathered
seven autobiographical essays written by major French historians. In his
introduction, Nora defines the ego-history project as:
une expérience […], un exercice [qui] consiste à éclairer sa propre his-

toire comme on ferait l’histoire d’un autre, à essayer d’appliquer à soi-
même, chacun dans son style et avec les méthodes qui lui sont chères, le
regard froid, englobant, explicatif qu’on a si souvent posé sur d’autres.
D’expliciter, en historien, le lien entre l’histoire qu’on a faite et l’histoire
qui vous a faite. (1987, 6–7)
an experiment […], an exercise which involves clarifying one’s own history

as one would write the history of another, to try to apply to oneself, with
one’s own style and cherished methods, the cold, globalizing, explanatory
gaze that has so often scrutinized others. To tease out, as a historian, the
link between the history that you have produced and the history of which
you are a product. (1987, 6–7)
As Nora explains, the historians who contributed to his volume were

asked to direct the explicative gaze generally used to study others to
themselves. He intended to propose ‘a new genre for a new age
of historical consciousness’ (Nora 1987, 5) by offering a ‘portrait de
groupe’ (group portrait) of post-Second World War French leading
historians (Nora 1987, 6, 352–356; 2001, 23). In so doing, he hoped
to shed a new light on historical practices by conferring a collective

dimension to the narration of individual selves. Indeed, as historian
Jaume Aurell points out, its ‘multiple narratives can be read as one text
that defines a specific generation of historians’ (2016, 119). This being
said, for reasons that remain in part unexplained, the political and cul-
tural diversity of Nora’s proposed group portrait remains relatively lim-
ited and, strikingly, the volume includes only one contribution by a
female historian.1
While not exactly new,2 Nora’s project gave additional recognition
to the interlinking of the subjective and the objective in academic prac-
tice. The subjective component of this ‘new genre’ presents a number
of important challenges. Indeed, as with autobiographical writing in
general, one of the key difficulties of the ego-history genre lies with the
question of origins and its associated risk of teleological interpretations.
Across the chapters of Essais d’ego-histoire, as well as in later collections
of intellectual autobiographies, the attempt to elucidate what shaped
one’s thinking often starts with a return to childhood and a question-
ing of the origins. ‘Tout vient de l’enfance, bien sûr!’ (Of course, it all
comes from childhood!), writes Maurice Agulhon in Nora’s volume
(1987, 10).3 Even Georges Duby, who writes at the beginning of his
text that he will only discuss himself as a professional historian (1987,
110)—claiming that therefore ‘ici l’essentiel est tu’ (the essential is
omitted here)—reaches back to the dawn of his life by referring to his
childhood and several aspects of his private life. The importance of early
age is perhaps most obvious in Pierre Chaunu’s text (1987, 61–107),
which is quite significantly entitled ‘Le Fils de la morte’ (the son of the
dead woman). Its memorable opening line reads: ‘Je suis historien parce
que je suis le fils de la morte et que le mystère du temps me hante depuis
l’enfance’ (1987, 61; I am a historian because I am the son of the dead
woman and the mystery of time has haunted me since childhood).
Chaunu’s text, as its title suggests, is perhaps the most teleological piece
1 For further analyses, see Dosse (1988) and Revel (1988) in a special issue of Le Débat
dedicated to Nora’s volume.

2 Beyond the fact that methodological reflections are an intrinsic part of scholarly activ
ity, several volumes of ego-histories avant la lettre can be found (see, for example, Passerini
and Geppert 2001b; Aurell 2016).
3 The exclamation mark cannot and should not simply be dismissed as being ironical as
Maurice Agulhon consequently devotes ten pages to his parents and grandparents.
in Nora’s Essais d’ego-histoire. Yet he is very aware of this inherent danger

of the ego-history genre and, like Nora’s other contributors, he is cau-
tious in his wording throughout the chapter, referring to the role of
‘chance’ or ‘luck’ (88–90) and the influence of external factors (May 68),
expressing doubt in various ways (for example, through the repeated use
of the verb ‘sembler’—to seem), and highlighting changes in his thought
process, including through the act of writing his own ego-history. The
recurring references to ‘the origins’, with their suspiciously clearly deline-
ated beginnings, middles and ends, were severely criticised by sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu (1986). At the same time, it is difficult to disagree with
the fact that any intellectual trajectory is informed by its social environ-
ment, in one way or another, even if its origins and influences may be
difficult to disentangle.
Beyond the risk of teleological readings, the genre of ego-history pre-
sents critical challenges at other levels as well. These are either directly
evoked or transpire in the chapters of the current volume, which dem
onstrates the awareness that scholars now have of the inherent difficul-
ties of this particular genre. Christopher Lloyd, for example, warns from
the outset that ‘composing an ego-history is a problematic and challeng-
ing exercise. Potential pitfalls include unmerited self-aggrandisement or
bathetic self-deprecation, embarrassing revelations and score-settling,
or the elision of the personal in a bland retailing of a CV’ (see Lloyd,
Chapter “Vichy, Kingdom of Shadows”). As for Marc Dambre, he briefly
but powerfully mentions ‘the masks and wiles of egotism, the rhetori
cal effects and word constraints, the systematic rationalization, the aspira
tion to serve as a model, and the illusion of representation’, also at the
beginning of his piece (see Dambre, Chapter “Currents and Counter-
Currents”). This being said, one of the most damning criticisms of this
genre, as Laurent Douzou reminds us in this volume (Chapter “Resisting
Fragments”), was made by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu who, as well as
highlighting the dangers of teleological writing, criticised the fact that
only ‘contented scholars’ (Bourdieu 1997, 44–47)—the successful ones,
with more or less the same profile—were asked to write their
ego-histories. There would be obvious interests in extending the
ego-history exercise to younger scholars, particularly from a devel-
opmental perspective since it would allow them to rethink or
adjust their intellectual positions (cf. Paxton, Chapter “Interview
with Robert O. Paxton, on the Writing of History and Ego-history”).
However, in the context of this volume, our aim was to examine the
long-term development of intellectual trajectories linked to a specific
topic, which implied inviting senior and renowned scholars whose careers
span several decades. The contributors to this volume could therefore be
described as ‘contented’ scholars inasmuch as they have achieved wide
academic recognition. At the same time, as the chapters in this volume
will show, most ego-historians include an explicit focus on the difficul-
ties and challenges they encountered at various stages of their career. The
(self-)critical awareness linked to ego-history practices seems to be an
effective deterrent to self-congratulatory narratives.
Another—though related—intrinsic challenge of the ego-history
genre is that it asks individual scholars to become the sole judges of their
own intellectual trajectories. To write one’s own history as if writing the
history of another, as Nora suggests (1987, 6–7), contradicts the need
to cross-reference sources and evidence, which is at the very core of
scholarly practice. Renée Poznanski (Chapter “Born in Paris…”) encap-
sulates this quandary in a single question: ‘How could I simultaneously
be the only source and the only critic of my own narrative?’ Adding to
this issue is the well-known fact that the past is inevitably perceived and
written through the prism of the present. As French historian Gérard
Noiriel put it in a fascinating autobiographical text (2003, 249), ‘les
historiens n’ignorent plus aujourd’hui que le passé s’écrit toujours au
présent’ (nowadays all historians are aware that the past is always writ-
ten in the present). Whilst we may now be conscious of the many pitfalls
of the genre, this awareness is no guarantee that one can avoid them,
as Marc Dambre remarks (Chapter “Currents and Counter-Currents”).
Retrospectively, Nora even wondered whether ego-histories were not
actually an ‘impossible genre’ (Nora 2001). Shortly afterwards, he none-
theless noted that the genre had found a certain degree of legitimacy,
pointing out that subsequent ego-historians demonstrated fewer scruples
in foregrounding themselves in their essays (Nora 2003).4
4 This short text (Nora 2003) is the foreword to a collection of ego-histories writ-
ten by historians of ‘la Suisse romande’ (French-speaking Switzerland), in which Nora

returns to the distinctive features of the genre and its close relationship with memory
studies. It is also worth noting that, a decade later, Nora wrote a longer ego-historical
text, suggesting that he too finally managed to overcome his own scruples (Nora and
Arjakovsky 2013).
Essays of Ego-histories After Essais d’ego-histoire

The criticisms and difficulties related to autobiographical academic writ-
ing have indeed not prevented it from flourishing. On the one hand, self-
reflective narratives contribute to making individual scholars more aware
of what Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth calls our ‘discursive dimension’ (2011;
cf. Ricœur 1984–1988), namely that narratives, which are unavoidable,
are never neutral; on the other hand, taken collectively, such texts can
offer invaluable insights into the development of disciplines and research
areas, ideological and institutional contexts, professional decisions and
initiatives, research directions and outputs.
This contributes to explaining why scholars in France and elsewhere
have been increasingly encouraged to reflect on their intellectual trajec-
tory. In France—but an equivalent diploma also exists in other coun-
tries—the ‘Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches’ (Accreditation to
Supervise Research), which was introduced in 1984 and has more or
less become a mandatory step for scholars striving to reach the highest
positions in academia (see Rousso, Chapter “From a Foreign Country”),
explicitly aims to encourage researchers to reflect on the originality of
their work as well as on their overall research strategy and development.5
In an approach reminiscent of the Essais d’ego-histoire, French historians
have also started to think collectively about their intellectual trajecto-
ries through a research seminar entitled ‘L’écriture de soi des historiens’
(Historians writing the selves) organised by Christian Delacroix, François
Dosse and Patrick Garcia.6
Confirming further that ego-history is not an altogether impossible
genre, several collective volumes have appeared since the publication
of Nora’s Essais d’ego-histoire. An exhaustive literary review may not be
particularly enlightening, but a few volumes of particular relevance for
the present project certainly stand out. These include Autobiographical
Writing Across the Disciplines: A Reader (2003), edited by Diane
Freedman and Olivia Frey. This book is possibly the most eclectic vol-
ume of ego-histories: it brings together almost thirty contributions—
half of which are republications, sometimes excerpts from book-length
autobiographies—written by scholars across the Arts, Humanities, Social
5 See https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000028933129&-
dateTexte=20170102. Accessed 4 August 2017.

6 See https://crheh.hypotheses.org/category/histineraires and Henry Rousso (Chapter
“From a Foreign Country”). Accessed 4 August 2017.

Sciences and STEM disciplines, as its subtitle indicates. Interestingly,

Pierre Nora’s edited volume is not cited as a reference. This suggests:
first, that Freedman, Frey and the contributors to their volume were not
aware of—or at least not influenced by—Nora’s edited volume; second,
that cultural and linguistic areas remain quite compartmentalised in aca-
demia; and third, as mentioned previously, that Pierre Nora’s ego-history
initiative is part of a wider academic trend. Freedman and Frey’s ques-
tions are indeed similar to those posed by Nora; this is the case when,
for example, the editors state that their volume seeks to understand ‘the
ways self and discipline coalesce into and shape one another’ (2003, 2).
The volume also offers interesting insights into the links between exacti
tude, modality and objectivity, and how the use of the first person—this
is to say the inclusion of the self in the narrative—contradicts the con-
ventions of academic discourse, a fact that undoubtedly hindered the
emergence and development of ego-histories: ‘Of all characteristics of
academic discourse, the most important seems to be objectivity. In fact,
exactitude and modality are aspects of objectivity, since exactness means
facts or objectively determined truth, and modality acknowledges subjec-
tivity that is as objective as possible within a context […]. [O]bjectivity
itself means the importance of being impersonal and, thus, “unbiased”’
(Freedman and Frey 2003, 7).
A special issue of French Cultural Studies edited by Brian Rigby
(1999), entitled ‘Personal Voices, Personal Experiences’, is particularly
interesting in a French context. It presents six texts by British literary
and film scholars and a text by an Australian anthropologist. This vol-
ume certainly contains many of the ‘ego-pitfalls’ mentioned previously,
yet, taken together, these jargon-free articles help to understand the state
of a discipline between the 1960s and the 1990s, and how French stud-
ies moved from being a purely literary discipline to being a genuinely
interdisciplinary one. The contributors also give fascinating insight into
the geographical, cultural and social fractures and evolutions of British
society during the second half of the twentieth century.7 Interestingly,
even though this special issue is about French culture, Nora’s Essais
d’ego-histoire again goes unmentioned. Clearly, contrary to the latter’s
monumental Les Lieux de mémoire (1984–1992, Realms of Memory), a
7 For a short history of the discipline of French Studies in the UK, see Diana Holmes
(2011).
simultaneous collective project, the ego-history volume remained largely

unnoticed for some time outside the Francophone world.
Furthermore, a collection of ego-histories from French-speaking
Switzerland was published by the research group Atelier H in 2003. The
editors, from a younger generation, were curious to gain insight into the
historians who had worked on the Suisse romande region before them.
Adopting a resolutely national and disciplinary focus, they gathered a
collection of twenty essays in a volume prefaced by Pierre Nora. Whilst
welcoming individual approaches, including a self-interview by Georges
Andrey, they nonetheless guided their contributors with a number of ques-
tions with a view to achieving a certain degree of unity across contributions;
these related to personal background (emphasising again the importance of
the origins) and to professional perspectives on history in French-speaking
Switzerland.
With a rather self-explanatory title, Why France? American Historians
Reflect on an Enduring Fascination (2007), edited by Laura Lee Downs
and Stéphane Gerson, is also of special interest for our topic. This book pre-
sents sixteen ego-chapters written by North American historians—fifteen
from the USA and one from Canada—with a specialisation in French his-
tory. Defining the volume as both ‘idiosyncratic and collective’ (2007,
4), the editors explain as follows the guidelines that they had given to
their contributors:
they [the contributors] were invited to explain how and why they became
historians of France, to reflect on the ways in which they have interacted
with and represented France, and to probe their fluctuating relationships
with the country. This book thus revolves around stories that, by virtue
of being anchored in specific places and times, capture this phenomenon
in its diversity and human dimensions. […] The authors rarely generalize
from their personal experiences or speak on behalf of this or that school or
generation. Instead, they present singular itineraries in which rational deci-
sions and intellectual arcs figure alongside serendipitous encounters and
emotional responses. (2007, 4–5)
These guidelines insisted upon two main points: first, why and how their
contributors had become historians of France; and, second, how their
representation and understanding of France evolved. This time, the well-
documented introduction includes a reference to Pierre Nora, though
merely in passing—expectedly, perhaps, given the focus of this book on

North American historians. What is more surprising is that, despite
their area of research, many contributors to this volume hardly refer to
meeting or discussing with French colleagues.
The volume Why France? is however of specific importance to schol-
ars interested in France and the Second World War because it contains
a chapter by Robert Paxton (2007, 35–46), the author of the afore-
mentioned Vichy France. His chapter is void of the mixed feelings—or
‘tough love’ as Herman Lebovics put it in his contribution (2007, 47)—
that a number of other scholars express towards France or the French
in that volume. Robert Paxton, on the contrary, acknowledges the
direct and positive influence and importance of three French historians
in his career—Raoul Girardet, Michel Winock and Jean-Pierre Azéma.
Significantly, he highlights his attempts to integrate with the French.
These largely successful attempts (‘I am still in touch with the friends
from my Ouessant days [early 1960s]’) are perhaps due in part to his
humility and sense of humour: ‘Finally, when someone commented,
after what I considered a particularly dazzling flourish, “Ah, Monsieur est
belge”, I had to admit to myself that I would never pass clandestinely
among the French’ (Paxton 2007, 40–44).
Finally, the twelve chapters of Holocaust Scholarship: Personal
Trajectories and Professional Interpretations (2015), a recent volume
edited by Christopher R. Browning, Susannah Heschel, Michael R.
Marrus and Milton Shain, also largely dominated by historians, will
certainly interest our readership. Its brief introduction reminds us that the
subjectivity of history is in part due to the subjectivity of the historian:
By its very nature, history is deeply contested and will always be rewritten
as new documents, new questions and new perspectives ensure an ongo-
ing debate. Historical facts too are not self-evident, as was explained by
the Cambridge historian E.H. Carr nearly 50 years ago, but interact in one
way or another with the historian’s life experience. ‘Study the historian
before you begin to study the facts’,8 Carr famously advised. (Browning
et al. 2015, 1)
Indeed, studying the scholar is at least likely to provide cues to a better

understanding of his or her work.
8 E. H. Carr, What is History? (1967, 23).

Ego-histories of France and the Second

World War in Context
Ego-histories of France and the Second World War: Writing Vichy shares
a number of key perspectives with the volumes listed above. It also pre-
sents certain differences which are central to the project and thus require
some explanation or clarification.
First, the current volume has a strong unity in focus since all con
tributors have dedicated a major part of their research career to a shared
topic, namely the history and memories of the Second World War in
France. Contrary to other volumes of ego-history related to France
(Nora 1987; Rigby 1999; Downs and Gerson 2007), its internal thread
is not derived from the nationalities of the contributors, but rather from
their lifelong area of research. Here, it is worth noting that ‘Vichy’ has
become a portmanteau word, with various negative connotations, all
linked with the manifold and evolving ways in which the French either
collaborated with the Germans during the war or ‘accommodated’
themselves to the Occupation (Burrin 1995). It could even be argued
that ‘Vichy’ now encapsulates France’s wartime experience as a whole.
Although ambiguous and debatable, the word ‘Vichy’ has become such
a recognised signifier that it is difficult to avoid it altogether. The subti-
tle of the present volume, ‘Writing Vichy’, acknowledges this fact, but
it does so by emphasising also its constructed dimension: through the
intellectual autobiographies of leading scholars from various disciplines
and national backgrounds, this book consequently aims to investigate,
highlight and clarify how specific inquiries and insights have evolved and
unfolded in all their complexity, showing the various ways in which his-
tory, memories, cultural representations and (inter)disciplinary perspec-
tives have encountered and located ‘Vichy’ since the aforementioned
memory turn of the 1970s.
Second, and following on from the close thematic focus, the contrib-
utors included in this ‘group portrait’ are based in different countries,
rather than forming a national group as is often the case in ego-history
collections. Of the fourteen scholars who contributed a chapter to this
volume, four are currently based in France, five are affiliated with UK
institutions and a further five are based in other countries (three in the
USA, one in Israel and one in Australia). Moreover, their personal and
intellectual histories are not restricted to the country in which they are
now based, which contrasts sharply with the three above-mentioned
‘French’ ego-history volumes: some contributors have roots in different

countries, and exchanges and collaborations are highly frequent. This
volume will therefore contribute to the growing trend of transnational
studies by enabling national differences or similarities to emerge beyond
the individual trajectories of the contributors. The comparative approach
will allow original perspectives on individual trajectories but also on the
encounters and circumstances experienced in and across various coun-
tries. This places the national focus on ‘Vichy’ in a broader international
perspective which has been crucial in opening up a critical understanding
of the Second World War and its history and memories, both in France
and beyond.
Third, most projects in the field of ego-history have focused on a sin-
gle discipline. Holocaust Scholarship (2015) is a welcome exception as not
all of its contributors were historians stricto sensu, even though these
still prevailed. The current volume has a resolutely multidisciplinary and
international outlook, although it is not evenly balanced in terms of dis-
ciplines and nationalities of the contributors. If, for example, six scholars
are historians, three of them are based in France. What is more, some of
them have at times, or, for Henry Rousso, mainly, focused on questions
of memory rather than on the history of the Second World War, bringing
them closer to the questions and approaches taken by scholars in other
disciplines. Conversely, if most of the scholars from other disciplines than
history have a literary background, they all also contributed to the intrin-
sically multidisciplinary field of ‘cultural studies’ or even cultural history,
thus bringing them on occasion close to the approaches taken by some
historians. If anything, these remarks should remind us that disciplinary
boundaries, although intellectually convenient to frame approaches and
practices, are also the result of academic conventions, and that
these evolve. That historians should be pioneers in the field of ego-
history may simply be due to the fact that, after all, history—including
the history of memory and historiography—is where their expertise lies.
If, originally, it might have seemed difficult to conceive specific ego-his-
tory projects outside the field of historical studies (see Aurell 2016, 118),
in the interdisciplinary context of history and memory studies, enquiries
and methodologies can increasingly be shared, and the opportunity for
interaction and crossovers thereby amplified.
Genesis and Structure of This Volume

As the ‘group portrait’ presented in this volume aims to open up new
perspectives on interdisciplinary and international collaborations, a two-
day preparatory workshop involving all contributors was held in Belfast
in January 2015, at the start of the project. The number of invitations
was adjusted to the funding secured for this event9—fifteen out of the
twenty scholars we initially contacted were able to accept our invitation,
but one colleague from France had to withdraw because of unforeseen
professional circumstances. Despite these budgetary and practical con-
straints, the volume, whilst not entirely balanced in terms of disciplines,
approaches and gender, nonetheless brings together a culturally and pro-
fessionally diverse group of leading scholars with a rich variety of differ-
ent backgrounds and trajectories.
A final note on the gestation of Ego-histories of France and the Second
World War is also needed here. The amount of guidance generally given
to ego-historians in previous publications seems to vary greatly from
volume to volume. A special issue of Historein (2001a), edited by Luisa
Passerini and Alexander Geppert, asked its contributors to reflect on
half a dozen very specific questions. Despite this, the contributors to
their volume, in the words of the editors, ‘showed a remarkable variety
of approaches as well as some convergences’ (2001b, 12). This could be
said of all volumes of ego-history, including those in which contributors
were given little guidance (Nora 1987; Downs and Gerson 2007) or per-
haps none (Rigby 1999). That contributions reflecting on individual tra-
jectories should be highly individual is hardly surprising. In this volume,
to allow the widest range of individual, societal or professional factors
or singularities to emerge, the contributors were deliberately not given
a prescriptive set of instructions. On the contrary, they were able to dis-
cuss possible approaches during the aforementioned preliminary work-
shop and, during the writing process itself, they exchanged drafts of their
chapters with one another and with the editors. The group portrait that
9 The workshop was generously supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme, the
Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF), the Society for
the Study of French History (SSFH), the Society for French Studies (SFS), the Institute for
Collaborative Research in the Humanities in Belfast, the Department of Modern Languages
at the University of Leicester and the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies.
follows has thus emerged organically rather than as part of a pre-estab-

lished framework.
The volume opens with an interview with Robert Paxton, who reflects
on the writing process of his own ego-history and, more generally, on
the writing of history as a discipline. The fourteen chapters that fol-
low are grouped into three geographical sections: France, the UK and
non-European countries, namely Australia, Israel and the USA. Within each
section, contributors appear in alphabetical order. A concluding chapter will
reflect on the individual and collective perspectives that these chapters offer.
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Interview with Robert O. Paxton, on the
Writing of History and Ego-history
Robert O. Paxton, Manuel Bragança

and Fransiska Louwagie
Q: Approximately ten years ago, you wrote your ‘ego-history’, which

was published in Why France? (2007). Can you explain why you were
tempted by this project at the time? And how do you feel about the
experience in hindsight? Was it a useful exercise? Is there anything
you may now want to add or revise in your original ‘ego-text’?
A: It wasn’t my idea. But when I was asked to write my ‘ego-history’,
I rather enjoyed being able to reflect on my youth, education and
R. O. Paxton (*)
Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: rop1@columbia.edu
M. Bragança
University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
e-mail: manu.braganca@ucd.ie
F. Louwagie
University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
e-mail: fl47@le.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70860-7_2
20 R. O. Paxton et al.
professional beginnings and to thank the many people who steered me in

favourable directions.
I approached writing my own ego-history in a rather conventional
way: as a narrative that began at the beginning, with my youth in a fam-
ily deeply engaged in historical recollection and open to Europe.
It was an agreeable task, for the reasons mentioned above, but I do
not think it changed the way I worked as a historian. Perhaps it would
have done so if I had written an ego-history earlier in my career. To
answer your last question, I turned 75 in 2007, and I have made the sad
discovery that one doesn’t make very many major new intellectual begin-
nings after that age.
Q: The Second World War remains an important research area

across multiple disciplines. In your opinion, are there any research
avenues which remain underexplored? And do you think that there
is a ‘French way’ and ‘an outsider’s way’ of approaching the Vichy
period?
A: It’s hard to imagine any research avenue concerning World War II
that remains unexplored. The two world wars remain among the most
intensely studied periods of human history. But new generations always
come up with some unexpected new approach which seems completely
obvious once it is discovered, but that the old generation cannot yet
perceive.
Among the professional historians that I frequent, there is no ‘French
way’ as opposed to an ‘outsider’s way’ of approaching the Vichy period.
There is a professional code about doing history that is generally
observed internationally, at least in countries with free intellectual life.
In the perennial debate between eye-witnesses who have lived through
the events they describe and who place more trust in their memories
than in archival documents, and the historians who prefer to work with
contemporary archival documents, French and non-French historians
tend to form a common front. Professional historians of different
nationalities may have differing sensibilities, but only rarely (and usually
because of the introduction of non-professional concerns like ideology)
do they fail to understand each other.
INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT O. PAXTON ... 21
National sensibilities may play a greater role among writers of popu-

lar history who have not received professional training and subscribed to
professional values.
Q: As we mentioned, the history and memories of WWII have inter-

ested scholars across a wide range of disciplines. If historians are
read by scholars from other disciplines working in the field, the con-
trary is perhaps less obvious. In your opinion, what contributions
could other disciplines offer in particular?
A: I believe that historians sharpen their understanding if they pay atten-
tion to the social sciences, especially sociology and anthropology. I can-
not claim to have actually used the social sciences as much as I ought,
but I drew on political science in my Anatomy of Fascism (2004) and on
anthropology in my French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgères’ Greenshirts
and the Crisis of French Agriculture, 1929–1939 (1997).
One work that changed my way of thinking was Victor Klemperer,
LTI—Lingua tertii imperii (1947), a study of the way the Nazis
deformed language to serve propaganda purposes.
Q: If Vichy has become so prominent, how do you assess France’s

dealings with its past today? To what extent do the events and issues
of World War II and the Occupation of France still influence the
French today?
A: In the United States, one hears far too often the opinion that ‘the
French haven’t dealt with their past’. That judgment might have been
true in the 1970s; today it is totally unjustified. The French have gener-
ally (with a few exceptions) dealt with their past more openly and frankly
than most people, and certainly more so than most Americans.
French courts have tried and condemned Vichy officials, French his-
torians have written abundantly and probingly about Vichy, and French
textbooks and schoolteachers give students an appraisal of the Vichy
experience in accord with the most recent scholarship.
As proof of this point, consider my own experience. Although I wrote
works about Vichy France that could be painful for French people to
read, I find that my critics are far outnumbered by my supporters. To
my great surprise, I was accorded the ‘Légion d’honneur’ by the French
state.
22 R. O. Paxton et al.
The great humiliation of June 1940 and the varied and controversial
responses of the French people to the German occupation are still mat-
ters of the utmost concern to French people today. They cannot stop
wondering what their grandparents did, and whether it was something
they can admire. Just as the American Civil War of 1861–65 still marks
the United States profoundly today, few French people remain indiffer-
ent about the Vichy government and the German occupation.
(This interview was conducted in March 2017 over email.)
References
Klemperer, Victor. 1947. LTI—Lingua tertii imperii. Berlin: Aufbau.
Paxton, Robert O. 1997. French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgères’s Greenshirts
and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929–1939. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Paxton, Robert O. 2004. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Knopf.
Paxton, Robert O. 2007. A Mid-Atlantic Identity. In Why France?: American
PART II
Voices from France

Currents and Counter-Currents
Marc Dambre
To my son, Romain
According to Danièle Sallenave, who is not only a novelist but also an

academic and my contemporary, we are fundamentally engulfed in a
generation gap: ‘One is always one era behind; the canons which we are
taught belong to the previous era’ (Sallenave 2002, 64). I experienced
a similar gap myself, but there is also another gap, a social and cultural
one, which in fact separates me from Danièle Sallenave even more than
from the preceding generation. What the two of us have in common
seems to be very general. So how can we then distinguish what belongs
solely to one individual, one ‘ego’? There are well-known pitfalls and
difficulties in the genre of ego-history: the masks and wiles of egotism,
rhetorical effects and constraints, systematic rationalisation, the aspiration
to serve as a model and the illusion of representation. Identifying these
does not automatically allow one to avoid them, but I shall try.
Whether as an editor or an author, my work, through the study of
individual writers or literary movements in books or shorter pieces, has
often been concerned with the history of literature.1 Other publications,
1 A selective bibliography, up to 2010, can be found in Jeanyves Guérin and Alain
Schaffner (2011).
M. Dambre (*)
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France
e-mail: marc.dambre@univ-paris3.fr

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70860-7_3
26 M. Dambre
including literary analyses and poetics, belong clearly to the domain of

literary criticism, but although it is practical to distinguish between the
two perspectives, I have always seen them as organically related. More
generally, the relationship between post-1939 French literature and his-
tory has always been my most obvious focus of interest. I should also add
that, although broached quite early on in my work, ‘Vichy’ only makes
intermittent appearances in it. It is there, but it is not central, and I shall
try to explain why at the end of this chapter.
Currents and counter-currents have shaped my career. In what fol-
lows, I shall mention works by predecessors, challenges, opportunities,
the role of chance and the influence of specific institutions or individu-
als. I shall sometimes eschew linear chronology in order to highlight an
overall direction. Minor personal details are included, not for any hypo-
thetical originality, but, on the contrary, where I feel that they illustrate
shared characteristics that may be useful in defining a particular situation.
In this way, forgotten, subconscious or unexpressed motivations may
perhaps also be revealed.
The Village and the World

Born near Dunkirk in 1942, I only have indirect memories of the war,
through traces of its violence which were still visible when I grew up:
the carcass of a rusted motorcycle in a field, the rear lights of a Jeep in
the village breaker’s yard, an aircraft wing lying in a courtyard, and so
on. These images lacked the aura of Marshal Foch’s ghost, originating
from the previous war at Mont Cassel that we could see on the horizon.
Politics only intruded occasionally on our lives in the northern canton
of Maritime Flanders. Elections in Bergues brought Paul Reynaud, our
Member of Parliament from 1946 to 1962, back into the limelight. His
enemies would remind us of two pronouncements he had made during
the Phoney War: ‘We shall win because we are the strongest’ and ‘The
Iron-Ore Route has been cut off’. Apart from this, there were hardly any
events until forced industrialisation came about in the 1960s. Workers’
struggles seemed unimportant, more iconic than significant, far from a
neglected, albeit local, mining region. At home, the secrecy of the polling
booth nevertheless let slip the hint that our mother had a soft spot for
the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (Christian Democrats). Strangely,
CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS 27
however, there was a book by a certain Charles Maurras,2 with a portrait

of the author on the cover, in the scanty farm library that was made up
of school textbooks and farming catalogues. I do not recall ever opening
it. Who, in any case, would have read it in our house? I wonder how, one
day, it ended up in our Catholic midst since we had not a shred of nostal-
gia for the monarchy. Its presence hinted at an underlying ambivalence,
but no one was really interested in politics: that domain was reserved for
the upper spheres of society. Our sector muddled along in a naive seam-
lessness, at a time when television only began to exist for us as Queen
Elizabeth II was being crowned. Neighbouring Belgium was a foreign
land. People used to go there on bikes for a day, with exciting plans for
smuggling cigarettes and coffee. In the spring, Italians came from the
deep south of their country to thin the sugar beets. Some of them were
great seducers, and caused outrage or even scandals sometimes. But once
the season was over, people settled back into their old routines.
After attending the Catholic school in the village, I was a boarder for
seven years at the Saint-Bertin secondary school in Saint-Omer in the
neighbouring département of Pas-de-Calais. There was no ‘social mix’, as
it is now called, and pupils from different origins were so rare that they
were exotic subjects of astonishment. We were all white boys, and, as far
as I know, there were never any Jews during my time there. Of course,
there was history, but it was bookish, so wars were always mentioned
with reassuring lists of causes and consequences. The rich mix of place
names and people’s names set us dreaming. I do not recall recent his-
tory having any significance for us. Yet… in a corner of the visitors’ room
there was an impressive mounted marble plaque with an inset effigy of
Philippe Pétain. As a native of Pas-de-Calais and a former pupil of the
school, he was, so to speak, in his rightful place. Not everyone took this
for granted, however. It was said that, one day, two priest-instructors
had a fight in the playground over this plaque: Gaullist versus Pétainist!
It must have been a surprising sight to witness these two teachers who
had devoted their lives to a religion, one of whose commandments was
to love one another, scrapping like that. But, at least, it introduced me,
probably for the first time, to Vichy.
2 Editors’ note: Charles Maurras was the major intellectual figure of the French anti-
parliamentary and monarchist movement Action française in the first half of the twentieth
century.
28 M. Dambre
The humanities and dead languages opened up exciting avenues for

me. They brought together my favourite subjects: history and literature.
We struggled with Xenophon’s Anabasis and Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars.
Some great French authors were proscribed by the Catholic Index, but
I was unaffected by this: my taste for literature, spotted by some of my
teachers, allowed me special privileges (that I enjoyed without perceiving
them as favouritism). As long as I was discreet about it, I was allowed to
read Malraux’s The Royal Way (1930)… It was the heyday of the livre
de poche (inexpensive paperback publications), and I was also to discover
The Diary of Anne Frank (1950, French translation) and other books.
Neither Sartre nor Camus were really deemed to be monsters in this
school, although Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince (1943) was clearly pre-
ferred: in second year, the teacher would read from it to us if we were
good. Scouting idealism was expressed in L’Étoile au grand large (1943)
by Guy de Larigaudie, although we did not know that he had died a
heroic death in May 1940 as a soldier in the cuirassiers.
In the early 1960s, after taking the baccalaureate, I went to the
Lycée Faidherbe in Lille, where I followed the standard curriculum in
classes preparing for the École Normale Supérieure.3 The non-clerical
atmosphere at the Lycée came as a real shock to me. The religion that
the worthy Fathers had taught me, without necessarily following its
teachings themselves in their own lives, seemed henceforth like a moral
and intellectual straight-jacket and, on occasion, pure hypocrisy. By the
same token, although I did not become a militant, I did gain political
awareness. Students took sides over the Algerian War of Independence,
demonstrations were frequent and not always without violence, and, one
night, we even heard a bomb explode. The newspapers L’Express and
France Observateur fuelled constant discussions. This was history in the
making.
Such events gave me some insight into my teachers and the teaching
profession that was soon to be my own. Everyone knew the philosophy
teacher was a member of the Communist Party as he made no secret
of it. We were less sure about the others. Happily conservative, inter-
mittently Gaullist, convinced Socialist or weak-kneed democrat, these
diverse tendencies flourished owing to fanciful hypotheses or unfounded
3 Editors’ note: The École Normale Supérieure is one of the prestigious ‘Grandes Écoles’,
selective higher education institutions that operate in parallel to the university system.
Many of their students pursue careers as senior civil servants and academics.
rumours. Impassive and meticulous, the history teacher would read

his lecture to us in the old style, hunched over his tattered manuscript.
Those yellowed sheets had at least the advantage of drip-feeding such
boredom that they weaned us definitively from a chronological history
of events, battles, farce and melodramas. The literature teacher, who was
a child of the Humanities of the 1930s and 1940s, passed on Republican
values and a love of fine writing to us. He took an interest in the revolu-
tion that was New Criticism, although he maintained a sceptical attitude
towards it. Prior to 1968, textual commentary and composition reigned
supreme. The history of literature was dominant. Text-book anthologies
like the famous ‘Lagarde et Michard’ were seen as the Tables of the Law.
Yet, we were on the eve of the famous quarrel between the ‘new critic’
Roland Barthes and Raymond Picard for whom New Criticism was a
‘new fraud’ (Picard 1965).
In this relatively uninspiring work environment, friendships blossomed
happily. They were to be continued at university, whose final goal was the
agrégation: I was interested in teaching from the age of ten, and this com-
petitive examination for recruitment into secondary-level education could
eventually lead to a further qualification for teaching at tertiary level. After
my three-year degree, I maintained the balance between literature and
history since my chosen topic for my Master’s thesis was ‘Aristophanes
and work’. This dissertation topic gave me the freedom to explore history
through personal reading. I had to research the plays of the great Greek
master of comedy for aspects of performance and ‘mindsets’. I focused
on the speeches and the realia—objects from everyday life—to explore
how society perceived work. I hoped to achieve a more precise and rigor-
ous reading through a close analysis of semantic and poetic modulations
rather than approaching the texts through interposed erudite interpreta-
tions. Have I ever abandoned this approach? Certainly not, even during
the two years of secondary school teaching that followed my agrégation in
classical studies.
My education would take another turn when I left for Vanderbilt
University, Nashville, in 1967, the year in which I registered for a thesis on
Roger Nimier (1925–1962). At Vanderbilt, where Robert Penn Warren
had been a student and then a teacher, New Criticism was still riding high
and influential in the French Department. It was, however, also subject to
literary history via Baudelaire: the centre dedicated to the poet was becom-
ing increasingly international under the benevolent authority of William T.
Bandy, its founding-father, who was soon to be joined by Claude Pichois.
30 M. Dambre
At the same time, I witnessed a youthful cultural revolution. For me, the Crisis
of 1968 did not mean the barricades in the Latin Quarter, but anti-Vietnam
protests, race riots, gunshots at night and the National Guard around a rep-
lica of the Parthenon, in or around Nashville campus. After living through this
kind of action at some distance from my native land, I returned to France.
Vanderbilt was developing a course at Aix-en-Provence. In this way, I had the
opportunity of living there as though I were a foreigner (dependent on the
New Orleans consulate) from 1969 to 1973 and of conducting research for
the thesis that I had begun.
And then, after a year in a Parisian secondary school, I returned to uni-
versity teaching abroad for four years, this time at the University of Tunis,
in a French-speaking country with a colonial history. It was under the dual
influence of Overseas Cooperation and the Tunisians themselves that I com-
pleted my initiation into recent history. It was the start of my experience of
diversity in histories and communities. Tennessee and the Deep South of the
United States had brought me into violent contact with the brutality of racial
discrimination. In Tunisia, discriminatory language from all sides, including
from the Tunisians, made me reappraise the letters written on school notepa-
per during the Occupation that Roger Nimier had conserved from his Jewish
classmate Henri Mosseri, a Parisian schoolboy who was executed during the
war by the occupying forces. I shall return to this point later on.
In Search of a Subject
After the agrégation, I was determined to get closer to ‘real life’, partly
to free myself from the burden of erudition. This legacy was no less of
an obstacle for me where legitimate French authors were concerned. So
I preferred to work in circumscribed virgin territory in order to become
a patient, careful scholar of the near-recent past. I would not be depend-
ent on a large number of predecessors because the novelty of the subject
and the fact that it belonged to recent times would give me the freedom
I needed. It is well-known that, at the time, the Sorbonne refused to
countenance work on any topic that involved a living writer, even if he or
she were an eighty-year-old. It is said that, as soon as François Mauriac
died in 1970, an avalanche of topics were submitted by telegram so as to
beat the competition.
To place myself at the right distance, I had to find a dead author,
but one who could still have been alive. In other words, I was look-
ing for someone who had just recently died and, if possible, had been
precocious. Under the guidance of a professor who had taught in Lille
and had recently joined the Sorbonne, I also had to conform to the
Lansonian model of ‘the man and his work’ approach—the ‘vieuvre’
as Antoine Compagnon called it4—and avoid the pitfalls of an argu-
ably outdated approach to literary criticism. And, since I dreamed of
becoming a writer, I was also looking for a writer with a style that I
liked. I was very fond of Stendhal’s clipped, playful writing. This is how
conversations with a friend led me to two ‘Stendhalians’, two writers
difficult to label: the marginal communist Roger Vailland and the prob-
lematic royalist Roger Nimier. The former died in 1965 and the lat-
ter in 1962. Michel Picard, who would soon publish his Libertinage
et tragique dans l’oeuvre de Roger Vailland (1972), already occu-
pied the field of Vailland studies. I therefore chose the second of the
two Rogers. This was in 1967. I first read Nimier’s Les Enfants tristes
(1951), a novel dedicated ‘In memory of HENRI MOSSERI (1924–
1944)’, probably because the dedication of the book to a young man
who had died at the age of twenty either intrigued or impressed me.
And Le Hussard bleu (1950) had also been dedicated to another young
man of his age, Michel Stièvenart, who had died at the end of World
War II, in 1945. What is more, at the time, I was roughly the same age
as they were when they died. It was then that the fact that I was born
on 16 July 1942, on the first day of the Vél’ d’Hiv roundup, took on
a real meaning for me.5 It took me thirty years to realise this, even if
the archives had given me an inkling of it. Humanities had not quite
prepared me for the emotional impact I experienced on reading the let-
ters that Mosseri had written to Nimier, mainly on sheets taken from a
school exercise book. These, kept by Nimier, had probably never been
read by anyone else. Spurred on by the danger, Henri Mosseri, a keen
4 Antoine Compagnon uses the composite word vieuvre to designate the ‘life and
work’—in French ‘vie et œuvre’—approach to literary studies in La Troisième République

des lettres (1983, 15): ‘ce mot-valise concrétise le concept même (déjà fort déterministe et
matérialiste) de l’histoire littéraire qui n’a pas cessé d’explorer les relations – présumées cau-
sales – de la vie d’un auteur et de son œuvre’ (‘this composite term describes the concept—
that is itself a priori deterministic and materialistic—of a literary history that insists on
exploring the relationship – presumed to be causal – between the life of an author and his
work’).
5 Editors’ note: The Vélodrome d’Hiver (or ‘Vél’ d’Hiv’) roundup took place on 16 and
17 July 1942. Instigated by the German authorities, the roundup was carried out by the
French police. Over 13,000 Jews, including 4‚000 children, living in or around Paris were
arrested during these two days, most of whom were consequently deported to Auschwitz.
Another random document with
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Figure 14 (Plate XXI.)
Only the anterior region of this embryo is shown in the figure,
which is a ventro-lateral view. While there is some change in the
general shape and in parts of the head, the reason for figuring this
stage is to show the first gill cleft (g′), which lies at an acute angle to
the long axis of the neck behind the eye (e). The cleft is narrow but
sharp and distinct in outline; it shows neither in this nor in the
following stages the branched, Y-shaped outline mentioned by
Clarke.
STAGE XII
Figures 15-15f (Plates XXI., XXII.)
In this stage, also, only the anterior region of the embryo is figured
in surface view. The shape of the head is about the same as in the
preceding stage, but it is drawn in exact profile. Three gill clefts (g¹⁻³)
are now present, and are wide and distinct. The first cleft, as in the
preceding stage, lies at an acute angle to the long axis of the
pharynx and nearly at right angles to the second cleft. The third cleft
sends a wide branch (g⁴) toward the posterior, as has been
described by Clarke, from which, or in connection with which
according to Clarke, the fourth cleft will develop. All three clefts may
be distinctly seen to open entirely through the pharyngeal wall. The
outlines of the visceral folds, especially of the mandibular, begin to
be apparent. The nasal pit (n) now shows as a round depression in
front of the more definitely outlined eye (e). The auditory vesicle (o)
is so deep beneath the surface that it may be seen only by
transmitted light.
Figures 15a-e represent transverse sections of an embryo of
about this general state of development, except that the gill clefts are
not so definitely open as in the surface view.
Figure 15a, the most anterior section of the series, passes through
the forebrain (fb) in the region of the eyes, and through the hindbrain
(hb) anterior to the auditory vesicles. The forebrain is here a large
cavity with a dense wall of a comparatively even thickness. Owing
probably to the section not being exactly in the transverse plane, the
eyes are cut in different regions, that on the left (ov) being cut
through its stalk, while that on the right (oc) is cut near its middle
region and hence does not show any connection with the forebrain.
The almost complete obliteration of the cavity of the optic vesicle to
form the optic cup by the invagination of the outer wall of the vesicle
is shown on the right side of the section (oc). The lens vesicle (lv) is
completely cut off from the superficial ectoderm (ec), which is
comparatively thin. The hindbrain (hb) has the usual shape for that
structure. Its ventral wall is dense and thick, while its roof is reduced
to the usual thin, wrinkled membrane. Close to the floor of the
hindbrain lies the notochord (nt), which is large and is distinctly
vacuolated. To the right of the hindbrain a large mass of darkly
stained cells (cn) is one of the cranial nerves, which is connected
with the hindbrain a few sections anterior to the one under
consideration. The pharynx (ph), which is cut near its extreme
anterior end, is represented by three irregular cavities near the base
of the forebrain. Scattered throughout the mesoblast, which makes
up the greater part of the section, are numerous blood-vessels (bv).
Figure 15b is twenty sections posterior to Figure 15a and passes
through the tip of the bent-under forebrain (fb). On the left the
section is anterior to the optic vesicle and barely touches the side of
the optic stalk, which is seen as a small lump on the ventro-lateral
wall of the brain. On the right the connection of the optic vesicle (ov)
with the forebrain is shown. Dorsal to the optic vesicle just
mentioned is a markedly thickened and slightly invaginated region of
the ectoderm (n); this is the nasal pit; on the left side of the figure the
thickening is shown, but the section did not pass through the
invagination. The hindbrain (hb) is somewhat narrower than in the
preceding figure, but is otherwise about the same; the origin of a
cranial nerve is seen on its left side (cn). The notochord (nt) has the
same appearance as in the preceding section. A number of blood-
vessels may be seen, the pair lying nearest the notochord being the
aortæ (ao), while the two other pairs, on either side of the fore- and
hindbrains, are the anterior cardinals (ac). The first aortic arches are
shown at ar. On the left the section passes through the exterior
opening of the first gill cleft (g′), so that the mandibular fold (md) on
that side is a distinct circular structure, made of a dense mass of
mesoderm surrounded by a rather thick ectoderm. The mesoderm of
this fold is especially dense near the center, probably the beginning
of the visceral bar. Near the center is also seen the aortic arch that
has already been mentioned. On the right the section does not pass
through the external opening of the first gill cleft (g′) so that the
tissue of the mandibular fold is continuous with the rest of the head.
It is of course the slight obliquity of the section that causes the
pharynx (ph) to be completely enclosed on the right, while on the left
it is open to the exterior both through the gill cleft and between the
mandibular fold and the tip of the head. The superficial ectoderm
shown here as a heavy black line varies considerably in thickness,
being thickest in the region of the nasal pit already mentioned and
thinnest over the roof of the hindbrain. The amnion (a) in this, as in
the other sections of the series, has the appearance of a thin, very
irregular line.
Figure 15c is posterior to the region affected by cranial flexure and
so shows only one region of the embryo, that of the hindbrain (hb),
which is here of essentially the same structure as above described.
On each side of the hindbrain is a large auditory vesicle (o); that on
the left is cut through its center and shows the beginning of
differentiation, its lower end being thick-walled and rounded, while its
upper end is more pointed and has a thin, somewhat wrinkled wall.
The notochord (nt) is slightly larger than in the more anterior
sections. Numerous blood-vessels (bv, ar) are seen in the
mesoblast. The pharynx (ph) is here open ventrally and also through
the gill cleft of the left side; on the right side the plane of the section
did not pass through the external opening of the cleft. The mesoblast
of the visceral folds is much more dense than that of the dorsal
region of the section.
Figure 15d, as is evident, is a section through the region of the
heart, which appears as three irregular cavities (ht) with fairly thick
mesoblastic walls (mes′) lined with endothelium (en′). The body wall,
though consisting of but little besides the ectoderm (ec), completely
surrounds the heart, and the pericardial or body cavity thus formed
extends dorsally as a narrow space on either side of the foregut,
giving the appearance of a rudimentary mesentery, though no
especial development of such a structure would naturally be
expected in this region of the embryo. The foregut (ent) is a
moderately large cavity lined with a very distinct entoderm of even
thickness. Dorsal to the foregut are three large blood-vessels, a
median, and now single, dorsal aorta (ao), and a pair of cardinal
veins (cv). The notochord (nt) is small and is flattened against the
ventral side of the spinal cord (sc), which latter structure needs no
special mention. The muscle plates (mp) are considerably elongated,
so that they now extend ventrally to a point slightly below the upper
angles of the body cavity.
Figure 15e is through the middle region of the embryo, and, owing
to the curvature of the body, is not an exact dorso-ventral section;
this accounts, in part at least, for the unusual diameter in a dorso-
ventral direction of the aorta (ao), which is very large in proportion to
the other structures. The posterior cardinal vein is shown on the left,
but not on the right. The relative sizes of the spinal cord (sc) and
notochord (nt) are very different from what was seen in the
preceding figure. In this section the spinal cord is considerably
smaller than in the preceding, while the notochord is very much
larger; in fact the notochord here seems abnormally large when
compared to corresponding sections of other series. It is true,
however, that while the spinal cord has been diminishing in diameter
the notochord has been increasing. The spinal cord, notochord, and
dorsal aorta are all so large that they are flattened against each
other, the pushing in of the ventral side of the spinal cord being even
more marked than is shown in the figure. On either side of the spinal
cord a large spinal ganglion (sg) is seen, closely wedged in between
the spinal cord and the adjacent muscle plate (mp). As in the
preceding stage, there is a marked space between the muscle plate
and the adjacent ectoderm (ec). The somatic mesoblast at the upper
angle of the unenclosed body cavity is thickened on each side and
somewhat bulged out by the Wolffian body to form what might be
termed a Wolffian ridge (wr). In the mid-ventral line is the
considerably developed mesentery (ms), from which the intestine
has been torn. The Wolffian bodies now consist, on each side, of a
group of five or six tubules (wt) of various sizes, near which in a
more ventro-lateral position, close to the upper angle of the body
cavity, is the more distinct Wolffian duct (wd). The allantois is fairly
large by this time, and may be seen in the most posterior sections as
an irregular, thick-walled outgrowth from the hindgut.
A horizontal section through the anterior end of an embryo of this
age is shown in Figure 15f. While enclosed of course in the same
membranous amnion (a), the pharyngeal region of the section is
separated by a considerable space from the more anterior region
where the section passes through the forebrain (fb) and eyes. The
spinal cord (sc), notochord (nt), muscle plates (mp), aortæ (ao), and
anterior cardinal veins (ac) need no special description. The
appearance of the pharynx (ph), with its gill clefts and folds, is quite
similar to that of the corresponding structures in the chick. None of
the four clefts (g¹⁻⁴) show, in the plane at which the section was cut,
any connection with the exterior; in fact the fourth cleft (g⁴) would
scarcely be recognized as a cleft if seen in this section alone. One or
two of the more anterior clefts are open to the exterior. Three pairs of
aortic arches are seen, and each visceral fold has a central
condensation of mesoblast.
STAGE XIII
Figures 16-16g (Plates XXII., XXIII.)
The embryo (Fig. 16) now lies on one side, body torsion being
complete. The curvature of the body is so marked that the exact
length is difficult to determine. The eye (e) and ear (o) have about
the same superficial appearance as in the preceding stage. The
nose is not shown in this figure. About thirty somites are present; the
exact number cannot be determined in surface view. The amnion is
complete, though not shown in the figure, and the tail (t) is well
formed. The umbilical stalk was torn in the removal of the embryo, so
that it is not shown in the figure. The dim outline of the now
convoluted heart may be seen if the “cleared” embryo be viewed by
transmitted light; it is not shown in the figure. The allantois (al) is a
rounded sac of considerable size just anterior to the tail. Four gill
clefts (g¹⁻⁴) are now present; the most posterior one is more faint
than is represented in the figure, and it could not be definitely
determined from a surface view whether or not it opened to the
exterior. The mandibular fold (md) is now fairly well outlined, but
there is as yet no sign of the maxillary process.
Figure 16a is the most anterior of a series of transverse sections
made of an embryo of the approximate age of the surface view just
described; it passes through the tip of the forebrain (fb) and shows
the nasal pit (n) of the right side. The great thickening of ectoderm in
the region of the nasal invagination is represented by a solid line.
Owing to the obliquity of the section, the left nasal pit was not cut.
The mesoblast is quite dense and contains two or three small blood-
vessels near the roof of the brain. The plane of this section, owing to
the cranial and body flexure, cut the embryo also in the region of the
pharynx; this part of the section was, as a matter of convenience,
omitted from the drawing.
Figure 16b is in reality more anterior in position, considering the
entire embryo, than the preceding; but the region of the embryo
represented is more posterior, so that it is described at this point.
The greatly elongated outline of the brain is due to its being cut
through the region of flexure, so that the forebrain (fb), or, perhaps,
midbrain, is shown at one end, and the hindbrain (hb) at the other.
The walls of these cavities are somewhat wrinkled and irregular and
their constituent cells are beginning to show slight differentiation,
though this is not shown in the figure. On the left side are seen a
couple of darkly stained masses; one is the origin of a cranial nerve
(cn); and the other is one of the auditory vesicles (o), which is still
more irregular in outline than it was in the preceding stage. The only
blood-vessels to be seen are a few very small ones that lie close to
the wall of the brain. The ectoderm is quite thin at all points.
Figure 16c, the largest section of this series, passes through the
forebrain in the region of the eyes and through the gill clefts. The
forebrain (fb) exhibits on the left a marked thickening of its wall (ch),
the edge of the cerebral hemisphere of that side, which is just
beginning to develop; on its right side the lower part of the forebrain
is connected by a well marked optic stalk (os) with the optic cup (oc),
in whose opening lies the lens vesicle (lv), now reduced to a
crescentic slit by the thickening of its posterior wall. The mesoblast is
more dense in those parts of the section adjacent to the pharynx
than in the more distant regions, and the ectoderm thickens in a
marked way as it approaches the borders of the pharynx and gill
clefts. Only a few small blood-vessels (bv) are to be seen in the
region of the forebrain.
Parts of three pairs of clefts (g) are shown in the figure: one pair
opens widely on either side, so that there is a large area of the
section that is distinct from the two still larger portions and contains a
small, thick-walled cavity (g) on the right side; this cavity is a gill cleft
that is cut through neither its outer nor its pharyngeal opening.
No structures other than this small portion of a gill cleft and a few
blood-vessels are to be seen in this middle region of the section. In
the more posterior part of the section, in which the notochord (nt) is
located, a pair of curved clefts may be seen, opening entirely
through the wall on the left, but closed on the right (g). One distinct
pair of aortic arches is shown (ar), and also the dorsal aortæ (ao),
which are of very unequal size. The spinal cord (sc) and muscle
plates need no special description.
Figure 16d is in the region of the heart (ht) and lungs (lu). The
former is an irregular cavity whose walls, especially on the ventral
side (mes′), are becoming very thick and much folded. Although thin,
the body wall completely surrounds the heart, as would be expected,
since this was true of the preceding stage. The lung rudiments (lu)
and the foregut from which they have arisen have the same
appearance as in the chick; they consist of three small, thick-walled
tubes so arranged as to form a nearly equilateral triangle. They are
surrounded by a swollen, rounded mass of mesoblast which almost
completely fills the surrounding portion of the body cavity (bc). The
pleural sides of these crescentic portions of the body (or pleural)
cavity—that is, the boundary of the mass of mesoblast just
mentioned—are lined with a thickened layer of cells, shown by the
solid black lines in the figure. The lung rudiments may be traced
through about fifty sections of this series, or about one twelfth of the
entire series. At the dorsal angle of the part of the body cavity (bc)
just described, near the dorsal aorta (ao), are two dark, granular
masses (ge), which, under a higher magnification than is here used,
are seen to consist of a small group of blood-vessels filled with
corpuscles; although several sections in front of the anterior limits of
the kidneys these are evidently glomeruli. They may be traced,
though diminishing in size, far toward the tail, in close connection
with the Wolffian bodies. At intervals they are connected by narrow
channels with the dorsal aorta; no such connection was present in
the section drawn. The notochord (nt), spinal cord (sc), muscle
plates (mp), and spinal ganglia (sg) need no special mention. The
mesoblast is beginning to condense in the neighborhood of the
notochord, and the ectoderm is slightly thickened laterally and
dorsally.
Figure 16e is in the region of the liver and the Wolffian bodies; it
also shows the tip of the ventricular end of the heart. The liver (li) is a
large irregular mass, of a blotchy appearance under this
magnification, lying between the heart (vn) and the intestine (i).
Under greater magnification it is seen to be made up of indefinite
strings of cells; and its still wide opening into the intestine may be
seen in more posterior sections. The intestine (i), which in this
section might be called the stomach, is a fairly large cavity with the
usual thick entodermic walls; it is supported by a comparatively
narrow mesentery. The body cavity on the side next this mesentery
has the same thick lining that was noted in the region of the lungs.
The convolutions of the thick peritoneal lining may easily be
mistaken in places for parts of the enteron. The Wolffian bodies may
be seen as two groups of tubules (wt) in their usual location. The
heart is cut through the ventricle (vn), as has been said. The section
being at right angles to the long axes of the villi-like growths of the
myocardium, the depressions between these mesoblastic cords are
seen as a number of small irregular areas, each one lined with its
endocardium. The incompleteness of the body wall below the heart
is apparently due to an artificial break and not to a lack of fusion. The
only point that need be mentioned in connection with the structures
of the dorsal part of the section is that the distinctness of the myocœl
(myc) on the right side is somewhat exaggerated.
Figure 16f is in the middle region of the embryo where both
splanchnopleure and somatopleure are unfused. Owing chiefly to the
unclosed condition of the midgut (i) and to the increase in length of
the mesentery (ms), the section is quite deep dorso-ventrally. The
continuation of the amnion (a) with the somatopleure is of course
here evident.
The most striking feature of the section is the marked projection of
the Wolffian ridges, though no local enlargements of these ridges
indicate the rudiments of the limbs. A large mass of Wolffian tubules
(wt) is seen projecting into the upper part of the body cavity on each
side; close to each of these masses is the posterior cardinal vein
(pc), and between them is the large aorta (ao). The other structures
are about as in the preceding section.
Figure 16g represents a sagittal section of the anterior half of the
body of an embryo of this or possibly a slightly younger stage of
development. The three regions of the brain are clearly indicated, as
well as the cavity of the spinal cord (sc). The roof of the hindbrain
has been made too thick in the figure; it should be represented by a
mere line. A little mesoblast is to be seen at places between the roof
of the brain and the superficial ectoderm. A slight invagination of the
epithelium (p), between the floor of the brain and the anterior end of
the notochord, probably represents the beginning of the hypophysis.
No indication of the paraphysis is yet to be seen. Extending from the
region of the hypophysis to the posterior end of the section is the
notochord (nt); it is much vacuolated and gradually increases in
thickness toward the posterior, though its outline is quite irregular;
except at the extreme anterior end and at one or two other places, it
lies in close contact with the floor of the neural tube. Directly under
the notochord lies, in the posterior half of the figure, the large dorsal
aorta (ao). The pharynx (ph), opening between the end of the
forebrain and the thick mandibular fold (across which opening the
amnion, a, of course extends), is a funnel-shaped space which
passes out of the plane of the section toward the posterior end of the
figure. Its thick endodermal lining extends to the mandibular fold on
the ventral side, while on the dorsal side it gradually thins out and
becomes continuous with the thin ectoderm that extends over the
forebrain. Just back of the mandibular fold is the bulbus (b), and
back of that is the edge of the ventricle (vn). Posterior and dorsal to
the ventricle the liver (li) is seen as an irregular mass of cells, and
dorsal to the liver one of the Wolffian bodies (wt) is cut through its
extreme edge.
STAGE XIV
Figures 17-17g (Plates XXIII., XXIV.)
Body flexure has increased until now the forebrain and tail are
almost in contact (Fig. 17). The eye has developed somewhat; the
ear vesicle, which is not shown in the figure, is small and seems to
lie nearer the ventral side; the nasal pit is much larger and is
crescentic in shape. The hyomandibular cleft (g′) still persists as a
small crescentic slit, while the next three clefts are now represented
merely by superficial grooves separated by distinct ridges, the
visceral folds. No indication of a fifth cleft is seen. The maxillary
process (mx) grows ventralward under the forebrain and is already
longer than the mandibular arch (md).
The chief advance in development over the preceding stage,
besides the formation of the maxillary process, is in the appearance
of the appendages (aa and pa); they have the characteristic shape of
the rudimentary vertebrate appendage, though the anterior pair
seem to point in an unusual direction at this stage and to be slightly
more developed than the posterior. The curious, anteriorly directed
heart (ht) is, perhaps, somewhat abnormal. The umbilical stalk (u) is
comparatively narrow and, like the allantois, was cut off close to the
body.
Transverse sections of an embryo of this stage are represented in
Figures 17a-g, drawn under a lower magnification than were any of
the preceding figures.
Figure 17a is in the region of the pharynx, and passes through the
forebrain (fb) and posterior part of the hindbrain (hb). In the thick
walls of both of these structures histological differentiation has
begun, so that even under low power an inner granular and an outer
clear zone may be distinguished. Under greater magnification the
presence of short fibers may be made out among the cells. The
cerebral hemispheres (ch) are well-marked structures, their
asymmetry being of course due to the obliquity of the section. Only
one eye is cut by the plane of the section, and this one shows no
connection with the forebrain. The outer wall of the optic cup (oc) is
so thin that under this magnification it can scarcely be seen as a
dark line surrounding the retinal wall. The lens (ln) is now a solid
mass, of the usual type for vertebrate embryos, its front or outer wall
being a scarcely discernible line. The hindbrain (hb) has the usual
form for that region and does not differ particularly from what was
noted in earlier stages except in the histological differentiation that
has already been mentioned. As with the eye, it is only on the right
side that the auditory vesicle (o) is shown. It shows some
differentiation, but not so much as would be seen were it cut in
another region. In the center of the section the pharynx (ph) forms an
irregular cavity connected with the exterior on the left by a gill cleft
(g) and by another slit which is simply the anterior margin of the
stomodæum. On the right neither of these openings is in the plane of
the figure, though the gill cleft (hyomandibular), which lies close to
the auditory vesicle, is almost an open passage. A few small blood-
vessels are scattered through the section; one of these (bv), lying
between the notochord (nt) and the floor of the brain, is noticeable
from its being very closely packed with corpuscles, so that at first
glance, under low magnification, it looks more like a nerve than a
blood-vessel.
Figure 17b is also through the pharyngeal region, a short distance
behind the preceding section. The growth of the cerebral
hemispheres (ch) is better shown than in the preceding figure, as is
also the general form of the optic cup (oc). On the left the nasal
cavity (n) is seen as an elongated slit with thick walls; it is cut near,
but not through, its opening to the exterior. The same gill cleft (g) that
was seen in the preceding figure is seen here as a narrow,
transverse cleft, open at both ends. Between the notochord (nt) and
the spinal cord (sc) is the same, though now double, blood-filled
vessel (bv) that was seen in the preceding section. The other blood-
vessels are larger here than in the more anterior region. There is a
faint condensation of mesoblast in the neighborhood of the
notochord, and a more marked condensation (mp) farther toward
each side is the curiously shaped muscle plate.
Figure 17c is through the heart region, and that organ is cut
through the opening from the lower or ventricular into the upper or
auricular chamber. The thickening of the wall of the ventricle, which
was noticed in the preceding stage, has increased to such an extent
that there is now a marked difference in the thickness of the
ventricular and auricular walls. As in the preceding stage, the body
wall is torn, probably in handling, so that it appears to be incomplete
around the ventral side of the heart. Dorsal to the heart two small
circular holes (ent) with thick walls are the œsophagus and trachea,
cut anterior to the point of bifurcation of the latter into the bronchial
or lung rudiments. On either side of these structures is an elongated
blood-vessel (ac), the anterior cardinal vein, its elongation being due
to the fact that it is cut at the place where it turns downward to empty
into the heart. Dorsal to the œsophagus are the aortæ (ao), which
are here cut just at the point where the two vessels unite to form
one; the next section, posterior to the one under discussion, shows
an unpaired aorta. The notochord (nt) and spinal cord (sc) need no
description, except to note that the latter shows active histological
differentiation, numerous mitotic figures being seen under higher
magnification, especially in the cells that line the spinal canal. On the
right of the cord the edge of a spinal ganglion (sg) is seen, in
connection with which in other sections are seen the clearly defined
nerve roots. The condensation of mesoblast around the notochord is
quite evident, and in close contact with this medial condensation are
two very characteristic, S-shaped muscle plates (mp), which extend
from the level of the dorsal side of the spinal cord to the upper limits
of the cardinal veins. In some sections the muscle plates even yet
show slight remains of the myocœl at the dorsal end.
Figure 17d is in the region of the posterior end of the heart (ht),
which is cut through the tip of the ventricle, and the anterior end of
the liver (li), which has the appearance of a mass of darkly stained
cords or strands of cells surrounding a large blood-vessel (mv). This
blood-vessel may be called the meatus venosus, though it is not
separated by any line of demarcation from the auricle. A few sections
anterior to this region the meatus venosus opens dorsally into a
large vessel on each side (dc), which at first glance seems a part of
the body cavity, but which is in reality the ductus Cuvieri, formed by
the union of the anterior and posterior cardinal veins. An irregular,
crescentic cleft (bc), lying medial and parallel to each of the
Cuvierian vessels, is the body cavity. In the upper angle of this cavity
is a granular mass, the glomerulus, that of the left side being
accompanied by the extreme anterior end of the Wolffian duct. In the
rounded mass of mesoblast, between the cleft-like regions of the
body cavity, the lung rudiments (lu), and the œsophagus (oe) are
seen as three small, circular openings; that of the œsophagus is
somewhat smaller than the other two. The notochord (nt), spinal cord
(sc), and muscle plates (mp) have almost the same appearance as
in the preceding section. A spinal ganglion (sg) is seen on each side
of the spinal cord; the one on the left shows a well-defined spinal
nerve (sn), which may be traced ventrally as far as the end of the
muscle plate, along whose medial side it courses. The ventral nerve
root is plainly seen; the dorsal root, in this section, less plainly. The
amnion (a) and abdominal wall are, as in the preceding figure, torn in
the region of the ventricle.
Figure 17e is a short distance posterior to the figure just
described. The liver is cut through its middle region and forms a
large, darkly staining, reticular mass on the left side of the figure.
The digestive tract is seen at two places to the right of the liver; the
smaller and more ventral of these openings (i) may be called the
intestine, while the larger is evidently the stomach (i′). The body wall
is here unfused and becomes suddenly thinner as it passes upward
into the amnion (a). The Wolffian tubules (wt) form a very
conspicuous mass on either side of the mesentery, in close
connection with the posterior cardinal veins (pc). In the mesoblast
between the dorsal aorta (ao) and the notochord are two small,
irregular, darkly stained masses (sy). These are shown in the
preceding two figures, but were not mentioned in the description.
They may be traced through a great part of the length of the embryo
back of the head region; at intervals corresponding in length to the
distance between the spinal ganglia they are enlarged, while
between these enlargements they are very small in cross-section. At
certain points a small blood-vessel is given off by the dorsal aorta to
the immediate neighborhood of each of these small areas. Although
they show no connection with the central nervous system, these
structures appear to be the rudiments of the sympathetic nerves.
Figure 17f is in the region just in front of the hind legs. The
abdominal walls are here unfused, and into the unenclosed body
cavity projects the intestine (i), supported by a narrow mesentery
and surrounded by a comparatively thick mass of mesoblast. The
Wolffian body and duct form a mass of considerable size on each
side of the mesentery. The Wolffian body is cut near its posterior end
and consists of smaller tubules than in the more anterior regions.
The Wolffian ducts (wd), on the other hand, are very large and are
much more clearly distinguishable from the Wolffian tubules than in
the preceding sections. The Wolffian ridges (wr) are very marked
projections on the sides of the body, and in a region farther caudad
become especially developed as the posterior appendages, to be
described in connection with the following section. Both spinal
ganglia are shown in this figure (sg), and in connection with the left
ganglion the spinal nerve (sn), extending ventrally as far as the level
of the Wolffian duct. The sympathetic nerve rudiments do not extend
so far caudad as the plane of this section. The dorsal end of each
muscle plate (mp) is seen, in this and other sections, to be slightly
enlarged to form a round knob; this knob contains a distinct cavity
(not shown in the figure), the myocœl.
In Figure 17g, owing to the curvature of the body, the plane of the
section passes through the body at three places: through the region
of the heart and lungs (Fig. 17d), through the region of the posterior
appendages, and through the tail. In fact, the plane of the section
represented by each of the preceding figures cut the embryo in more
than one region, but for the sake of simplicity only one region was
represented in each figure. In the figure under discussion only the
leg and tail regions have been drawn, though the latter region (t),
being cut through one of its curves, is seen as an elongated body
with a section of the spinal cord, notochord, etc., at each end. Both
regions shown in the figure are enclosed in the same fold (a) of the
amnion. Of the structures in the dorsal side of the larger or more
anterior part of this figure nothing need be said. The most striking
feature of the section is the presence of the large posterior leg
rudiments (pa). As was noted in the preceding figure, they are, as
usual, merely local enlargements or projections of the mesoblast
(covered, of course, with ectoblast) of the Wolffian ridge. They are,
as shown in this section and in the surface view of this stage (Fig.
17), bluntly pointed projections from the sides of the body. The
anterior appendage seems to be slightly more developed than the
posterior, as was noted in describing the surface view of the embryo.
The digestive tract is cut through its extreme posterior end, in the
region that may be termed the cloaca (cl), for into it at this point the
Wolffian ducts open (wdo). As the narrow cloacal chamber is
followed toward the tail, it becomes still smaller in diameter, and the
ventral depression or cleft seen in this figure gradually becomes
deeper until its walls are continuous with the ectoderm that covers
the ventral projection of mesoderm between the hind legs; no actual
opening to the exterior is present, however. There is a space of
about twenty-five or thirty sections (in a series of eight hundred)
between the posterior ends of the Wolffian bodies and the cloacal
openings of the Wolffian ducts. The body cavity (bc) and the
posterior cardinal veins (pc) are very small in this region, as might be
expected.
STAGE XV
Figure 18 (Plate XXIV.)
Only the head of this embryo is represented, as the general state
of development is about the same as in the preceding stage.
The chief object in making the figure is to show the five gill clefts
(g¹⁻⁵). The fifth cleft, though small and probably not open to the
exterior, is quite distinct in this embryo. The writer would feel more
doubt of its being a true, though rudimentary, gill cleft had not Clarke
(17) found a fifth pair of clefts in his material. The nasal pit has
advanced in development somewhat and shows the beginning of the
groove that connects it with the mouth. In this figure the crescentic
hyomandibular cleft shows its connection with the groove between
the mandibular and the hyoid folds.
STAGE XVI
Figure 19 (Plate XXIV.)
This embryo is only slightly more developed than the preceding.
Body flexure is so great that the forebrain and tail nearly touch. Only
the anterior three gill clefts are visible. The maxillary process (mx) is
longer and more narrow; the mandibular fold has not changed
appreciably. The nasal pit (n) is now connected by a distinct groove
with the stomodæum. The appendages have increased in size, the
posterior (pa) being the longer. The anterior appendage (aa) is
distinctly broadened to form the manus, while no sign of the pes is to
be seen at the extremity of the posterior appendage. The heart (ht) is
still very prominent. The stalk of the umbilicus (u), which is quite
narrow, projects from the ventral wall in the region between the heart
and the hind legs. The tail is of considerable length and is closely
coiled.
STAGE XVII
Figures 20-20j (Plates XXV., XXVI.)
The superficial changes noted in this stage chiefly concern the
head, which has increased considerably in length (Fig. 20). The
curvature of the body is slightly more marked, and the tail is more
tightly coiled at the end. There are still signs of three gill clefts. The
maxillary process (mx) is long and narrow, while the mandibular arch
(md) is still short and broad. The fronto-nasal region has greatly
increased and has the aquiline profile noted by Clarke. The nasal
groove has disappeared, and there remains the small opening (n) at
the side of the fronto-nasal region, near the end of the still separate
maxillary process. The umbilicus is in about the same condition as in
the preceding stage, but the heart is less prominent. The outline of
the manus (ma) is more definite, and the extremity of the posterior
appendage is distinctly flattened out to form the rudimentary pes
(pe). The position of the elbow-joint in the anterior appendage is
seen at the end of the reference line aa.
Typical transverse sections of this stage are shown in Figures 20a-
j.
Figure 20a is a section through the middle region of the head,
cutting the hindbrain on one side and the forebrain on the other. The
walls of the brain show rather more histological differentiation than
was seen in the preceding sections, though this cannot be shown
under the low magnification used. The hindbrain (hb), which is cut
near its anterior border, exhibits the usual membranous dorsal and
thick ventral walls. The forebrain is here seen as three distinct
cavities—a median third ventricle (tv), with a thick ventral wall, and a
thin dorsal wall extended to form a large paraphysis (epi), and two
lateral ventricles (ch), the cavities of the cerebral hemispheres,
whose walls are quite thick except on the side next the third
ventricle. The sections of this series being slightly oblique, the eye is
here cut on the right side only, where it is seen as a large,
semicircular cavity (e) with thick, dense walls. The mesoblast, in
which several blood-vessels (bv) are seen, exhibits three distinct
areas—a median, lighter zone, with a more dense area on either
side. The significance of this variation in the density of the mesoblast
is not apparent.
Figure 20b is only a few sections posterior to the section just
described. It is drawn chiefly to show the appearance of the
forebrain, the other structures being about as in the preceding figure,
except that both eyes (e) are here represented. The section passes
through the wide opening between the third (tv) and the lateral
ventricles (ch) and cuts the anterior edge of the pineal body[8] (epi).
The paraphysis is very large and is directed backward instead of
forward, as is usually the case among the lower vertebrates (if the
alligator may be so classed). It is shown in Figure 17a of a preceding
stage and will be again shown in a sagittal section to be described
later. The same areas of more dense and less dense mesoblast
noted in the preceding figure are seen here.
[8] Subsequent investigation showed that the structure here described as
the pineal body is, in reality, the paraphysis; the pineal body is absent in A.
mississippiensis.
Figure 20c, though still in the head region, shows several features
that were not seen in the preceding figures. On the left of the
hindbrain (hb) the auditory vesicle (o), which is now considerably
more advanced than in earlier figures, is seen as a larger, flask-
shaped cavity and a smaller, round one. Between the larger cavity
and the hindbrain is the root of a cranial nerve (cn), apparently the
eighth, since in another section it comes in close contact with the
wall of the larger part of the auditory vesicle just mentioned. On the
right side, ventral to the hindbrain, another and much larger nerve
(cn) is seen. Nearly in the center of the figure is seen a small,
irregular, thick-walled cavity (p); this is the pituitary body, and its
connection with the roof of the pharynx may easily be made out in
another section. The mesoblast in this region of the sections
contains numerous large and small blood-vessels and exhibits
certain denser areas which probably represent the beginnings of the
cranial cartilages. No sign of the forebrain is seen (the plane of the
section passing in front of that region), except that the tip of the wall
of one of the cerebral hemispheres (ch) is cut. The left nasal
chamber (n) is shown: it will be noted again in the following section.
The eye on the right side shows no remarkable features; its lens (ln)
is large and lies well back of the lips of the optic cup, which may now
be called the iris (ir). A thin layer of mesoblast has pushed in
between the lens and the superficial ectoderm to form the cornea,
and the outer wall of the optic cup is now distinctly pigmented. The
inner wall of the optic cup is beginning to differentiate into the retinal
elements. The eye on the left side is cut farther from its central
region and has a very different appearance from the eye just
described. This unusual appearance is due to the fact that the
section passed through the choroid fissure, which is very large and
seems to be formed by the pushing in of the walls of the cup and not
by a mere cleft in these walls. This fissure is hardly noticeable in the
stage preceding the present, and in a stage slightly older it has
disappeared; so that it would seem to be a very transient structure. It
apparently is formed at about the time that the optic stalk, as such,
disappears. It is in the region of the choroid fissure, if not through it,
that the optic nerve (on) enters the eye. Through the fissure also
enters a vascular tuft of mesoblast (pt) which may be seen projecting
into the optic cup after the disappearance of the fissure. This loop of
blood-vessels is doubtless the pecten.
Figure 20d represents a section through the hindbrain (hb),
pharynx (ph), and tip of the snout. On either side of the hindbrain are
a convoluted auditory vesicle (o), and several blood-vessels and
nerves, while ventral to it is seen the anterior end of the notochord
(nt), around which the mesoblast is somewhat more dense than
elsewhere. The pharynx (ph) sends out toward the surface a narrow
gill cleft (g′) in the neighborhood of each auditory vesicle. These
clefts connect with the exterior by very narrow slits, not seen in the
plane of this section. The opposite end of the pharynx, as seen in
this figure, opens on the left (pn) into the nasal chamber. The nasal
cavity on the right is cut in such a plane that it shows neither its
external nor its pharyngeal opening. The nasal passages are here
fairly long and nearly straight chambers; their lining epithelium is
quite thick in the middle region, but becomes thinner where it merges
into the epithelium of the pharynx at one end, and into the superficial
epithelium at the other end. The unusual appearance of the eye (e),
on the right side of the figure, is due to the fact that the plane of the
section cut tangentially through the extreme edge of the eye in the
region of the choroid fissure.
Figure 20e is only a short distance posterior to the preceding. On
the left side the pharynx (ph) is connected with the exterior through
the stomodæum, and on the right the hyomandibular cleft (g′) is cut
almost through its opening to the exterior. The auditory vesicle (o) on
the right is cut near its middle region, while that on the left is barely
touched by the plane of the section. The notochord (nt), with its
condensed area of mesoblast, is somewhat larger than in the
preceding section. The nasal canal on the right (n) is cut through
neither anterior nor posterior opening, while on the left side the canal
shows the anterior opening (an).
Figure 20f, which is in the region of the posterior part of the
pharynx and the anterior part of the heart, shows some rather
unusual conditions.
The spinal cord (sc) and notochord (nt), with the faintly outlined
condensations of mesoblast in their region, need no special
description. The pharynx (ph) is here reduced to an irregular,
transversely elongated cavity, the lateral angles of which are
connected on each side with the exterior through a tortuous and
almost closed gill cleft (g), which must be followed through many
sections before its inner and outer openings may be determined.
Dorsal to the pharynx numerous blood-vessels (bv), both large and
small, may be seen, while ventral to it is noticed a faint condensation
of mesoblast (la), in the form of an inverted T, the anlage of the
laryngeal structures. The ventral portion of the figure is made up of a
nearly circular thin-walled cavity, the pericardium (pr). Most of the
pericardial cavity is occupied in this section by the thick-walled
ventricle (vn), above which is the bulbus (b) and the tip of the auricle
(au). The bulbus is nearly circular in outline, though its cavity is very
irregular. A few sections anterior to this, the opening of the bulbus
into the ventricle is seen.
In Figure 20g the section represented is only a short distance
posterior to the one represented by Figure 20f. The mesoblastic
structures in the neighborhood of the spinal cord (sc) and notochord
(nt) will be described in connection with the next figure, where they
are more clearly defined. The œsophagus (oe)—or posterior end of
the pharynx, whichever it may be called—is here a crescentic slit,
with its convex side upward; ventrally it opens by a narrow glottis into
the trachea (ta). The trachea is surrounded by the same condensed
area of mesoblast (la) that was mentioned in connection with the
preceding figure, but the condensation is here more marked. From
the bulbus (b) an aortic arch (ar) extends upward for a short distance
on the right side, while to the left of the œsophagus an aortic arch
(ar) is cut through the upper part of its course. Ventral to the bulbus
the ventricle (vn) and two auricles (au) are seen surrounded by the
pericardial wall.
Figure 20h is in the region of the liver (li), which has about the
same position in relation to the auricles (au) that was occupied by
the ventricle in the last figure. The auricles are connected with each
other by a wide passage. The trachea (ta) and the œsophagus (oe)

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Ego-histories of France and the Second

World War: Writing Vichy Manuel

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Ego-histories of France and

More information about this series at

The Holocaust and its Contexts

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017961116

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: © Monique Decroos, Silhouettes, Mixed Media on Paper, 2015.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

This volume is the result of a two-day international workshop held in

Part I Opening Reflections

Interview with Robert O. Paxton, on the Writing

Part II Voices from France

Currents and Counter-Currents 25

On Chance and Necessity 67

From a Foreign Country 89

Part III Voices Across the Channel

In the Forests of the Night: England, France

Searching for ‘Contact Zones’ in France’s War 127

A Tale of Two Frances and a Curious Ancestor 145

Vichy, Kingdom of Shadows 165

Writers in Conflict 181

Part IV Voices from Far and Near

Good Fortune, Good Friends 201

The Other Side: Investigating the Collaborationists

When Faced with the Question 243

Born in Paris… 267

Reaching Vichy via Budapest: On Zigzags, Waves

Part V Closing Reflections

Conclusion: Cross-Perspectives on Ego-history 299

About the Editors

Dr Manuel Bragança is Assistant Professor in the School of Languages,

Dr Fransiska Louwagie is Lecturer in French Studies at the University

Margaret K. Atack is Professor of French at the University of Leeds.

and practices of language contacts in conflict’ and is currently Principal

Colin Nettelbeck is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of

Henry Rousso is Senior Research Fellow at the Institut d’Histoire du

A Tale of Two Frances and a Curious Ancestor

Manuel Bragança and Fransiska Louwagie

This volume gathers the intellectual autobiographies—or ‘ego-histories’,

© The Author(s) 2018 3

R. Suleiman (Harvard University). It also includes an interview with

French Perspectives on the History and Memories

With approximately sixty million people killed or murdered, the Second

range of media. In France, a key turning point in the memory of the

given on 8 October 1944—had actively supported or been involved in

Ego-history: A ‘New Genre for a New Age of Historical

une expérience […], un exercice [qui] consiste à éclairer sa propre his-

an experiment […], an exercise which involves clarifying one’s own history

As Nora explains, the historians who contributed to his volume were

to shed a new light on historical practices by conferring a collective

dedicated to Nora’s volume.

in Nora’s Essais d’ego-histoire. Yet he is very aware of this inherent danger

ten by historians of ‘la Suisse romande’ (French-speaking Switzerland), in which Nora

Essays of Ego-histories After Essais d’ego-histoire

dateTexte=20170102. Accessed 4 August 2017.

“From a Foreign Country”). Accessed 4 August 2017.

French Perspectives on the History and Memories

Ego-history: A ‘New Genre for a New Age of Historical

Essays of Ego-histories After Essais d’ego-histoire

Ego-histories of France and the Second

Genesis and Structure of This Volume