Life
1823-92; b. Tréguier, Brittany; son of Breton parents, his father
dying when he was five; ed. local ecclesiatical college; sent to Paris
by his mother to become a priest and attended Saint Sulpice, 1843-45;
led by his Hebrew philological studies to question divine revelation and
revealed religion and left the seminary; pupil-teacher in private school;
endured hardships before grad. agrégé in Ecole Norm. Sup.,
1848; marvelled and travelled; trans. Averroes; contributed early essays
to numerous journals, Revue des Deux Mondes, and Journal
des debats, collected as Etudes d’histoire religieuse
(1857), Essais de morale et de critique (1859). His Souvenirs
d’enfance et de jeunesse (1882) [var. 1883] autobiographical
reminiscence of early years; Averroes et l’Averroisme (1852),
doctoral thesis, written in Rome, from 1849; visited Athens, 1852; appointed
to MSS Dept of Bibl. Nationale, 1851; headed government expedition to
Phoenicia and Palestine, 1860-61; Ma Soeur Henriette, published
later (1895), on the death of his sister at that time; Professor of Hebrew,
College de France, 1861; chair suppressed after the publ. of Vie de
Jésus (1863), being the first volume of Les Origines du
Christianisme (1863-82) [var. 83], sold 50,000 in six months; sent
by Napoleon III to find Phoenician remains in Middle East; experienced
vision of the Greek ideal of human beauty, reason, and divinity at the
Parthenon, 1865; other volumes were Les Apôtres (1866), La
Vie de saint Paul (1869); reinstated in College de France after defeat
of France, 1870, later becoming Administrator, 1883; L’Antéchrist
(1873), L’Evangiles (1877), L’Eglise chretienne
(1879), Marc-Aurele (1881). Histoire du peuple d’Israël,
5 vols. (1887-89); his intellectual framework combined a romantic spiritualism
associated with his Celtic origins; a materialism which recognised that
the future lay in science; a reluctance to deny a place to the ideal in
the universe. Essays expounding his attitude incl. L’Avenir de
la science (1890), Dialogues et fragments philosophiques (1876);
Examen de conscience philosophique (1888); Drames philosophique
(1878-86). His correspondence with his sister Henriette from 1842 to 1845,
and also with Marcelin Berthelot, 1847-92, of great interest; His Oevres complêtes, ed. H. Psichari [gd-dg.], 10 vols. 1949-1958. OCFL FDA
OCIL
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Criticism
David
C. J. Lee, Ernest Renan: In the Shadow of Faith (London: Duckworth
1997), 328pp. [reviewed in TLS 28 March, 1997].
David C. J. Lee, ‘Ernest Renan: The Statue and the Calvary’, in Hubert Butler, ‘Lament for Archaeology’, in Roy Foster, ed., Butler, The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press; Dublin: Lilliput 1990), pp.113-19.
Joep Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (1986)
notices Ernest Renan,’Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’, in Discours et Conférences (Paris 1887), pp.277-310.
Terence Brown, in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed. Seamus Deane (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p.516.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p.9.
Hubert Butler, ‘Lament for Archaeology’, in Roy Foster, ed., Butler, The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press; Dublin: Lilliput 1990), pp.113-19.
W. J. McCormack, in ‘Varieties of Celticism’, From Burke to Beckett, Cork UP, 1985, p.226.)
Homi K. Bhabha, Nation and Narration, 1990, p.9; cited in Bill Ashcroft, et al., Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts, Routledge 2000, p.149.
Cairns & Richards, Writing Ireland, 1988, pp.45-46.
Richard Haslam, ‘Oscar Wilde and the Imagination of the Celt’, ‘Oscar Wilde Special’, Irish Studies Review, 11, Summer 1995, p.2-3.
Patrick Williams & Laura Chrisman, ed., & intro., Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1993, pp.172-80; here p. 175.
Chris Morash, et al., ‘The Triple Play of Irish History’, in Irish Review, Winter-Spring 1997, pp.29-36.)
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Notes
Mark Storey, Poetry and Ireland since 1800, A Source Book
(1988), reprints extract from The Poetry of the Celtic Races (1859),
trans. S. Hutchison (1896), a "springboard" for Yeats’s
‘The Celtic Element in Literature’ [no. 10, op. cit., infra].
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3: remarks that his five vol. History of the people of Israel (1887-83) was based on the premise that ‘national distress raises up prophets, by compelling ardent minds to fall back on the pleasures of imagination, which are the real ones.’ (Ibid. [3rd. edn. London: Chapman & Hall, 1891, p.xii.); further refs at 61, 563, 1348n.]
Belfast Public Library holds The Poetry of the Celtic Races, and Other Studies [trans.] [n.d.].
W. B. Yeats summons Renan extensively at the beginning of his essay
on ‘The Celtic Element in Literature’ and draws upon him for
the assertion that the Celtic account of the Pilgrimage of Lough Derg
provided Europe with the framework for the Divine Comedy (in Ideas
of Good and Evil, reprinted in Essays and Introductions, p.185).
Further, Yeats quoted him as saying that the Celtic imagination compared
with the classical was as ‘the infinite contrasted with the finite.’ ‘The Celtic Element in Literature’, 1897; rep. in Essays
and Introductions, p.173).
Henri Martin: The remark that the Celt shows a disinclination to ‘bow to the despotism of fact’, echoed by Matthew Arnold (1866, p.543) and often ascribed to Renan, was actually Henri Martin’s; see Terence Brown, W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography, Gill & Macmillan 1999, p.63.)
Getting it wrong: ‘Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation’, said Ernest Renan; quoted in Irish Times, Kevin Myers [review] (Sat 3 Oct 1992).
James Joyce: Stephen Dedalus reads Renan’s Vie de Jésus, in James Joyce’s Stephen Hero [1944].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)