Jules Michelet (French historian) Add a review

Jules Michelet (French: [ʒyl miʃlɛ]; 21 August 1798 – 9 February 1874) was a French historian and writer. He is best known for his multivolume work Histoire de France (History of France), which is considered a foundational text in modern historiography. Michelet was influenced by Giambattista Vico; he admired Vico's emphasis on the role of people and their customs in shaping history, which was a major departure from the emphasis on political and military leaders. Michelet also drew inspiration from Vico's concept of the "corsi e ricorsi", or the cyclical nature of history, in which societies rise and fall in a recurring pattern.

In Histoire de France, Michelet coined the term Renaissance (meaning "rebirth" in French) as a period in Europe's cultural history that reflected a clear break, away from the Middle Ages. This subsequently created a modern understanding of humanity and its place in the new, "re-birthed" world. The term "rebirth" and its association with the Renaissance can be traced to a work published in 1550 by the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari. Vasari used the term to describe the advent of a new manner of painting that began with the work of Giotto, as the "rebirth (rinascita) of the arts". Michelet thereby became the first historian to use and define the French translation of the term, Renaissance, to identify the period in Europe's cultural history that followed the Middle Ages.

Historian François Furet described Histoire de France as "the cornerstone of revolutionary historiography' and 'a literary monument."