Napoleon

"A model project for electronically published cultural history." -- American Historical Association

Wayne Hanley's The Genesis of Napoleonic Propaganda, 1796 to 1799 makes clever use of images as well as text to show the artful self-crafting on the part of a young provincial on the make. Using a term actually invented at or near the Revolution, the book makes propaganda into a key element in the rise of Napoleon. With a solid interfacing of cultural and political history, Hanley's novel approach meshes with recent works on the Revolution by Lynn Hunt, Carla Hesse, and others.

Wayne Hanley joined the West Chester faculty in Fall 2000, having received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1998.

He previously taught history at Columbia College, William Woods University, Lincoln University (of Missouri); and at the University of Missouri-Rolla. He also has taught both history and English at the secondary level. He has presented numerous papers, published several articles on the French Revolution and Napoleon, and has authored several pieces of creative writing.

Read The Genesis of Napoleonic Propaganda, 1796-1799 Online

Author: Wayne Hanley
Publisher: Columbia University Press (2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0231503679
ISBN-13: 978-0231503679

Introduction

In 1976, Jean Tulard, one of the most prolific and respected Napoleonic scholars in the world, noted that there have been more works written about Napoleon Bonaparte than there have been days since his death. Given this profusion, it seems almost obligatory for every historian writing on some aspect of Napoleon's life or on the Napoleonic era to apologize for adding a study to the corpus.

Nearly 40 years ago, for example, F. G. Healy began his The Literary Culture of Napoleon with such an apology, despite the fact that his is the only monograph on the subject and represents a model for similar studies on other historical figures. With such a corpus of work, one might easily conclude that every major event in Bonaparte's life is known in detail and that all that remains to be written is the minutiae of Napoleon's life and the filling in of the details.

But has everything worth knowing about Napoleon Bonaparte and about Napoleonic Europe already been studied? As Harold T. Parker pointed out in a 1987 article addressing this very question, the answer is, perhaps surprisingly, No.

While there is general agreement as to the events of Napoleon's life, much remains to be studied. This is particularly true for the social and cultural impact of his life and career, not only as they affected France, but Europe as well. Distinguished monographs on these topics, such as Louis Bergeron's masterful study of French society, France under Napoleon, have only begun to appear in the past twenty years. 

Other topics likewise are still relatively neglected, or earlier analyses have become dated by the study of previously unexamined materials. Napoleon's use of propaganda is a notable example of this last category of Napoleonic studies. ...

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment