French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Chantre, Péguy point final
History, Politics and Society

Péguy point final
Benoît Chantre

PUBLICATION DATE: 16/01/14 PUBLISHER: Félin (Editions du) SERIES: Les marches du temps ISBN: 978-2-86645-805-8 EAN: 9782866458058 FORMAT: Paperback NO. OF PAGES: 145 p.

1914, the outbreak of war, the death of Charles Péguy on September 5th at the onset of the Battle of the Marne. Yet history continues, attempting to reclaim him. De Gaulle wished to induct him into the Panthéon. Péguy remains buried near Meaux alongside his men. It is time to rescue him from his own legend, to unbutton the uniform and reveal the vital energy of a language and the sharpness of a thought. Putting an end to目 the misconceptions that have surrounded both the man and his work.
A full stop, but also a vanishing point: Péguy eludes history. His work finds its place within it only by transcending it. Heroic death is neither dismissed nor treated as an end in itself. It serves as the deferred horizon of his writing, an event reiterated in prose works often published posthumously, wherein Péguy reflects on history and deconstructs Napoleonic heroism. We discover how he sought to save himself from history and within it.

Thus, no end: an opening, where everything begins anew. A point of origin, then: Péguy traced histories backward to reach the moment when the eternal suddenly incarnates within the temporal. Thus, the Dreyfus affair is not what politicians made of it: tracing it back to its inception means hearing the moral revolution it carried. The same applies to the history of France, the Jewish people, or Christianity.

Returning to the source upstream of all foundations means reviving possibilities, here and now.

Table of Contents:

A VOICE OF SUNKEN MEMORY
The religion of the "modern world"
The forgetting of the people
Our homeland: a manifesto text

THE CARNAL SOUL
An unfinished diptych
The shared operation of the reader and the read
Entering into time

PARLIAMENTARY POLITICAL RESUMPTION
A theory of the model
Luminous Jaurès
Scandalous Jaurès

THE JUDGMENT OF HISTORY
A time of crisis
Legal reciprocity and ethical relation

Charles Péguy occupies a singular place in modern French literature and intellectual history, bridging the fin-de-siècle and the outbreak of the First World War. His writings engage deeply with the spiritual, political, and moral currents of his time, from the Dreyfus affair to the transformation of the French republic and the modern world. Readers interested in early twentieth-century French letters and intellectual history may find this volume relevant.