Книга The Hero and the Historians: Historiography and the Uses of Jacques Cartier
This unique study focuses on one national hero – Jacques Cartier – to show how changing notions of the past have shaped the national identity of both English- and French-speaking Canada.
Historians have long engaged in passionate debate about collective memory and the building of national identities. This book focuses on one national hero – Jacques Cartier – to explore how notions about the past have been created and passed on through the generations and used to present particular ideas about the world in English- and French-speaking Canada.
The cult of celebrity surrounding Cartier by the mid-nineteenth century, Gordon reveals, reflected a particular understanding of history, one which accompanied the arrival of modernity in North America. This new sensibility, in turn, shaped the political and cultural currents of nation building in Canada. Cartier may have been a point of contact between English and French Canadian nationalism, but the nature of that contact, as Gordon shows, had profound limitations. The Hero and the Historians is necessary reading for anyone interested in the underlying culture of national identity – and national unity – in Canada.
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Gordon has succeeded in offering a very astute and nuanced empirical study that situates history writing in its larger social and political contexts.
" - H-Canada"
L’analyse des sources visuelles concernant les sports et la culture associative de Montréal que présente Poulter ouvre une nouvelle perspective sur le rôle identitaire des élites anglo-montréalaises dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle ... Son analyse détaillée et équilibrée intègre avec succès des sources visuelles et textuelles. Le sujet est développé de manière logique et claire, et l’auteur fait montre de rigueur. Il s’agit là d’une importante contribution à l’historiographie concernant le discours identitaire au Canada, qui élargit ce champ d’étude au-delà de la division souvent trop rigide posée entre le Québec et le reste du pays.
" - Mens"This book will greatly interest those who wish to better understand the historiographic traditions of nineteenth and twentieth century Canada, particularly Quebec." - Journal of Historical Biography, Autumn 2010