Aux regards de la posterité: la construcción del mito napoleónico a través de la prensa directorial (1796-1799)

Abstract

In this article, we will consider the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte through self-fashioning, that is, the process of construction of his identity, his celebrity and his legitimacy during the French Directory, through three carefully facets designed and exploited by him: the warrior/military hero, the peacemaker/saviour hero of the nation and the reformer/administrator hero. In the desire to know the different heroic constructions of the Corsican general, we have focused our search on the French press of the last decade of the 18th century, focusing on four large groups of journals with different political ideologies: the moderate newspapers, the left-wing journals, the newspapers published by Bonaparte, and, finally, the royalist press.

Keywords

• myth
• napoleon bonaparte
• press
• propaganda
• hero
• directory