From one revolution to another (1795-1830) A happy parenthesis for intellectual sociability

Against the traditional representation, which sees the beginning of the 19th century as a weak period in French literature, the aim is to show that this time was very fertile for the literature of ideas, thanks to a particularly favourable context, where intellectual exchange, within small groups, benefited from the disappearance of the aristocratic culture of the Ancien Régime as well as from the weakness of the book market and the media system which took its place from 1830 onwards.