Luigi Mascilli Migliorini: Le Myth du héros. France et Italie. (The myth of the hero. France and Italy after the fall of Napoleon)

After twenty-five years of extraordinary events, Europe accepted with relief, but also with some regret and some concern, the peace that followed the fall of Napoleon. The men who had lived the epic, the soldiers of the Revolutionary and Empire Wars, and the young men who had not taken part, found it difficult to satisfy themselves in this era that seemed to them, in comparison, flat and stifling. Napoleon became, in the individual and collective memory, the hero who had offered the men of his time social mobility and an often more exciting life. Through this mythic caracter, European culture developed the heroic aspirations of the individual, a consequence of which was the need to reconcile the popular equality and identity movements. Mascilli Luigi Migliorini, professor of Modern History at the Eastern University Institute in Naples (specialist in the history of European culture, from the Napoleonic to the romantic era), invites us to an in-depth reflection on this “myth” and its mutations in Romantic Europe.

Paris: Éditions of Fondation Napoléon – Nouveau Monde Éditions, 2002, Series Études. Language: French.

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