The Modern Regime

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893) was a French critic and historian. He was the chief theoretical influence of French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism, and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. Taine is particularly remembered for his three-pronged approach to the contextual study of a work of art, based on the aspects of what he called race, milieu, and moment. Taine had a profound effect on French literature; the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica asserted that " the tone which pervades the works of Zola, Bourget and Maupassant can be immediately attributed to the influence we call Taine's. " His works include The French Revolution (1877), The Ancient Regime (1881) and The Modern Regime (1890).