Paul Hazard facts for kids
Paul Gustave Marie Camille Hazard (born August 30, 1878, died April 13, 1944) was a famous French professor and historian. He studied and wrote about the history of ideas, which means he looked at how important thoughts and beliefs changed over time in Europe.
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About Paul Hazard
Paul Hazard was born in a small town in France. His father was a school teacher. Paul went to a very good school in Paris called the École Normale Supérieure starting in 1900. In 1910, he earned a special degree called a doctorate from the Sorbonne. He became well-known for his important paper about the French Revolution and Italian literature.
Hazard's Teaching Career
Paul Hazard began his teaching career in 1910 at the University of Lyon. There, he taught something called comparative literature. This is where you study and compare literature from different countries. In 1919, he also started teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris.
In 1925, Hazard became a professor of comparative literature at the Collège de France. This is a very respected institution in Paris. From 1932 to 1940, he also taught as a guest professor at Columbia University in New York. He visited other American schools to give lectures during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1939, he was chosen to be a member of the Académie française, a very important French group that protects the French language and culture.
Life During World War II
After teaching in New York in 1940, Paul Hazard chose to return to Nazi-controlled France in January 1941. Even though times were very difficult, he kept teaching at Lyon and Paris. He also continued his studies and writing. Later that year, he was suggested to become the head of the University of Paris. However, the Nazis did not approve him.
Despite the harsh conditions, he finished his book European Thought in the Eighteenth Century. In the year he died, an article he wrote called Pour que vive l'âme de la France (So That the Soul of France May Live) was published secretly. Paul Hazard passed away in Paris on April 13, 1944.
Paul Hazard's Books
In 1921, Paul Hazard helped start a magazine called Revue de littérature comparée. He wrote many important books. These include Histoire illustrée de la littérature française (with Joseph Bédier, 1923–24), and books about famous writers like Leopardi (1913), Lamartine (1926), and Stendhal (1927). He also wrote about the famous character Don Quichotte (1931).
Books for Young Readers
One of his special books was Les livres, les enfants et les hommes (1932). This book was later translated into English as Books, Children and Men. In it, Hazard looked at books written for young readers or books that children loved to read. He explored children's literature from all over Europe and across many centuries. He was the first to notice that countries in Northern Europe had more children's literature than those in Southern Europe.
His Most Famous Works
Paul Hazard is best known today for two major books. The first one is La Crise de la conscience européenne, published in 1935. Its English title is The European Mind, the Critical Years, 1680-1715. This book explored the ideas of the 17th century, which focused on order and perfection, and how they clashed with the new ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.
His last completed work was La Pensée européenne au XVIIIème siècle, de Montesquieu à Lessing. It was published after he died, in 1946. The English title is European Thought in the Eighteenth Century from Montesquieu to Lessing. This book continued the ideas from The European Mind. Hazard had planned to write a third book to finish his thoughts, but he passed away before he could complete it.
See also
In Spanish: Paul Hazard para niños
