ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several examples of autobiography produced by members of the French scientific élite to show how autobiographical writing responded to these varied pressures. The French revolution had produced perceptions of the fundamental category of autobiography, time itself, which were new and disturbing. The idea of the revolution as a rupture in time, was accompanied by an unparalleled sensation of time as having speeded up. The period of the revolution saw a collapse, for the French élite, of the patronage networks stemming from members of the former privileged orders. With these networks in disarray, the search for patronage and recognition became ever more uncertain, and this uncertainty was compounded by the fact that the role of the man of science in public life was in rapid transition. The definition of vocation in other words, in most male autobiographies, is defined as finding a new ‘father’, becoming the ‘child’ again.
