Towards a New French Renaissance: Memory, Tradition and Cultural Conservatism in France before the First World War.

Conflicts over cultural memory represent a significant stake in definitions of Frenchness advanced by opposing nationalist groups in the years before the First World War. The concept of a new ‘renaissance française’, broached by conservative critics and historians of art and literature often at odds with prevailing democratic republicanism, looked to the past to fashion a programme of renewal that challenged both the artistic vanguard and royalists’ advocacy of a Latinist classicism. This essay maps the social and cultural forces that shaped critics’ promotion of a new generation of artists credited with reinvigorating an indigenous tradition rooted in the Gothic and in a vernacular classicism associated with figures such as the Le Nains and Chardin. This loose grouping sought to reassert France’s cultural leadership in Europe under the aegis of a creative elite committed to the synthesis of the nation’s exceptional qualities embedded in its diverse, though complementary, artistic traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]