Provincial Culture and
the Human Sciences
in Inter-war France:
The Life and Works of
Gaston Roupnel
Roupnel lectured at the University in Dijon; was a
member of the Académie des arts, sciences et belles lettres
de Dijon; and served as president of the regional vintners
association in 1936-37.
Although he lived a quiet provincial life, Roupnel
maintained considerable social and professional contacts.
His circle of friends included nationally recognized
scholars, artists and intellectuals such as Daniel Halévy,
Romain Rolland, Gabriel Belôt, Pierre Mille, Edouard
Estaunie, Paul Adam, Gaston Bachelard, Fernand
Braudel, Ferdinand Lot and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
The Provincial Perspective
Provincial Scholarship and Historiography
The Role of Public Intellectuals
Regional and Cultural Identity
The Politics of Economic Regionalism
Roupnel’s private life and professional career revealed a deeply
personal and enduring commitment to the Burgundian region for
which he served as cultural interpreter and historical guide. Taken
together, the whole of Roupnel’s works may be read as a
precocious ‘histoire totale’ of his adoptive ‘pays.’
He embraced regional political concerns publicly and raised
regional consciousness through his scholarly efforts to locate and
discuss the geographical, historical and cultural roots of the
Burgundian heritage-- as a novelist (Nono- 1910; Le Vieux Garain1913; Hé Vivant!- 1927); professor at the University of Dijon; vintner
(Maison Roupnel père et fils); journalist (articles for the Dépêche de
Toulouse from 1916 to 1924); geographer (Histoire de la campagne
française- 1932); historian (“Une Guerre d’Usure-” 1916; La ville et
la campagne au xvii siècle- 1922); philosopher (Siloë- 1927 and La
nouvelle Siloë- 1945); folklorist (Bourgogne, types et coutumes1936) and essayist (Histoire et Destin- 1943 and “La vie de Notre
Seigneur Jésus Christ”- [1963].
Roupnel’s novel Nono (which narrowly missed receiving
the prix Goncourt in 1910) established his reputation as a
regional novelist. Set within the milieu of GevreyChambertin’s vineyards, Nono fictionalized village
morality in order to address the themes of ultimate
redemption and forgiveness in modern France.
As a shrewd and capable vintner,
Roupnel participated in the ‘Côtes-de-Nuits’
trial that ensured the development of the
‘Système d’appellation Controlée’
Roupnel’s Chambertin was selected to
represent the vintage at the 1937
International Exposition in Paris
Proposed Dissertation Topic
• Thèse: “La Société
dijonnaise au 17e siècle
(d’après la litterature
populaire)”
• Thèse supplémentaire:
La Société de
l’Infanterie dijonnaise”
La ville et la campagne (1922)
Historians were and remain highly enthusiastic:
Lucien Febvre reviewed it as a rare and nourishing work
written by a veritable historian
Marc Bloch, however, found it’s style “too literary”
Pierre Goubert, referred to it as his only regional point of
departure while working in the 1960s.
1998: Daniel Roche calls it an “unsurpassable work!”
Roupnel’s major philosophical work, Siloë (1927) provided an
esoteric characterization of Universal Spirit from a monist
perspective. It drew from contemporary physics and biology to
depict the nature and form of Universal Spirit as infinite and
perpetually recurring. Accordingly, Roupnel linked the particular
and the universal, the material and the spiritual, as well as the past
and the present in an effort to ontologize a system of pre-established
harmony. Read in light of his geographical and historical works,
Siloë provided the epistemological foundation for Roupnel’s ‘religion
of the soil.’ Gaston Bachelard was so enthralled by Siloë, that he
wrote a book-length response entitled L’Intuition et l’instant.
Roupnel reached the summit of his unique professional and
personal celebrity with the publication of l’Histoire de la campagne
française in 1932. This work offered a long term analysis of the
French agrarian systems from the Neolithic to modern times. It
linked physical and human geography across time to illustrate the
reciprocal and indissoluble influences between humankind and the
natural world. Roupnel’s Histoire de la campagne was innovative in
the use of non archival sources such as field shapes, road networks
and ecological variations to generate a semiotic analysis of the
landscape. Building on the monist philosophy outlined in Silöe,
Roupnel sketched an existential history of the affective relations
between villagers and the land in order to sustain a mythicoreligious interpretation of the French country side. Dedicated to the
author’s peasant ancestors, the work culminates with a paean to the
“peasant soul” of France.
• The ‘longue
durée’ of
rural
France
Roupnel believed that France’s agrarian
institutions provided a source of stability, structure
and harmony: “let us not hide our preference for a
regime that would restore the people’s ancient rights
to the soil and, while preserving a portion for each,
would restore the rural world to its original
Roupnel promoted his own works
by sending copies to academics
and libraries. (He even
subsidized the printing of his own
doctoral dissertation) This is a
calling card used by the famous
French philosopher Henri
Bergson to thank Roupnel for
having sent him a copy of
l’Histoire de la campagne
française. Bergson was probably
already familiar with Roupnel’s
philosophical work- Siloë.
Gaston and his wife Suzanne in their garden (1938)
Roupnel’s house on the “Place des Marronniers” in
Gevrey-Chambertin, France. The large doorway
serves to allow wagons filled with grapes to enter
the room where the press is kept.
TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT GASTON ROUPNEL:
Gaston Bachelard, L’Intuition et l’instant (1932).
Magda Bernhardt, Gaston Roupnel und Burgund
(1934).
“Mélanges,” Le Bien Public, 7 January 1931.
Pierre de Saint Jacob, “Gaston Roupnel,”
Annales de Bourgogne 18 (1946).
Lucien Febvre, “Les morts de l’histoire vivante,
Gaston Roupnel,” Annales 2 (1947).
“Gaston Roupnel,” Pays de Bourgogne, special
edition, 42 (1963).
“Hommage a Gaston Roupnel, 1871-1946,”
Académie de Dijon 120 (1973).
Philip Whalen, Gaston Roupnel: âme paysanne et
sciences humaines (Dijon: EUD, 2001).