Everything about Jacques Le Goff totally explained
Jacques Le Goff (born
January 1,
1924 in
Toulon) is a prolific
French historian specializing in the
Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries.
Le Goff champions the
Annales School movement, which emphasizes long-term trends over politics, diplomacy, and war, which characterized 19th century historical research. From 1972 to 1977, he was the head of the
École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). He was a leading figure of
New History, related to
cultural history. Le Goff argues that the Middle Ages formed a
civilization of its own, distinct from both the
Greco-Roman antiquity and the
modern world.
Life
A prolific medievalist of international renown, Le Goff is the principal heir and continuator of the movement known as
Annales School (
Ecole des Annales), founded by his master
Marc Bloch. He succeeded
Fernand Braudel in 1972 at the head of the
École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and was succeeded by
François Furet in 1977. Along with
Pierre Nora, he was one of the leading figure of
New History (
Nouvelle histoire) in the 1970s.
Since then he's dedicated himself to studies on the historical
anthropology of
Western Europe during medieval times. He is well known for contesting the very name of "Middle Ages" and its chronology, highlighting achievements of this period and variations inside it, in particular by attracting attention to the
Renaissance of the 12th century.
In his 1984 book
The Birth of Purgatory he argued that the conception of
purgatory as a physical place, rather than merely as a state, dates to the 12th century, the heyday of medieval otherworld-journey narratives and of pilgrims' tales about
St. Patrick's Purgatory, a cavelike entrance to purgatory on a remote island in Ireland.
An
agnostic, Le Goff presents an
equidistant position between the detractors and the apologists of the Middle Ages. His opinion is that the Middle Ages formed a
civilization of its own, distinct of both the
Greco-Roman antiquity and the
modern world.
Among his recent works are two widely accepted biographies, a
genre his school didn't give much relevance to: the life of
Louis IX, the only
King of France to be
canonized, and the life of
Saint Francis of Assisi, the
Italian mendicant friar.
In 2004 Le Goff received the
Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History from the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Selected bibliography
Works
- Time, Work, & Culture in the Middle Ages, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1980)
- Constructing the Past: Essays in Historical Methodology, edited by Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
- The Medieval Imagination, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1988)
- Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages, translated by Patricia Ranum. (New York : Zone Books, 1988)
- Medieval Civilization, 400-1500, translated by Julia Barrow. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988)
- The Medieval World, edited by Jacques Le Goff, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. (London: Parkgate, 1990)
- The Birth of Purgatory, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1990)
- History and Memory, translated by Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)
- Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993)
- Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996)
- Saint Francis of Assisi, trans. Christine Rhone (London: Routledge, 2003)
- The Birth of Europe, translated by Janet Lloyd. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005)
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