L. E. Shiner
The Secret Mirror: Literary Form and History of Tocqueville's "Recollections".
Cornell University Press, 1988. First edition. 0801421500 xvii/224 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", is bound in green cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book is new. Jacket shows light shelfwear. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"Tocqueville opens the "Recollections," his deeply ambivalent memoir of the failed 1848 Revolution in France, with an explicit denial of any literary intent or rhetorical appeal. Forced by illness into an unaccustomed state of leisure, Tocqueville claims to record his experiences solely for his own amusement, holding up a "secret mirror" through which he will be able to contemplate the past truthfully. In this innovative study, L. E. Shiner examines the "Recollections" as a text case of the relation between form and content in historical writing. Drawing on current literary theory and semiotics, Shiner offers a close reading which at once confirms the inevitably literary character of historical writing and demonstrates how rhetorical analysis of Tocqueville's wring deepens our understanding of his political thought."