|
Cultural routes are crossed by characters or
figures, historical and heroic, religious or mystical, mythical and
legendary, real or imaginary, who help the better understanding of
certain key moments of the history of Europe, if one devoids them
of the nationalist character with which they are often charged.
Whether history books retained them in the first
place or whether they appear only in the memory of some people,
they constitute a gallery of significant portraits that one can
join together by enriching the presentation of the territories and
places they crossed and which influenced them.
|
 |
 a different heritage
|
Since the origin of the concept of heritage, the
word has been carrying various interpretations. It comprises the
idea of tangible material goods, with a quantifiable value, of
individual or collective nature, but also the idea of intangible,
immaterial goods, of technical, spiritual, intellectual, and
cultural heritages. It now also comprises the idea of space, of
environment: the space for example represented by a landscape,
resulting from various components: human know-how, economic needs
for the survival of a community, a society, natural resources. Thus
"the objects of heritage" become increasingly complex, even
composite. They are cut through by very different levels of
reading. They become carriers of a subtle range of perceptions that
play with history and memory, refusal and nostalgia, recovery or
interpretation, concern for scientific and technical analysis, or
appropriations without foundation. So their "uses" and
appropriations are also multiple. They are treated as obvious
identity reference marks on a local and national level, but also as
possible sources of riches, including the handling price based on
the complexity of the different meanings they are carrying.
|
Introducing significant characters or figures that
help us understand Europe brings to the fore the complexity of the
concept of heritage and the contradictions it is carrying, but also
the difficulty of a European reading. Such a subject, more than
others, reveals the multiple identities of the countries of Europe
during the sudden jolts of their respective histories and of their
common history. In addition, this subject is based on the
singularity of individuals anchored in time and space. Which
implies a totally different approach. To take, for example, the
topic of the "great discoveries" or to take as subject "Henri
the navigator", a Portuguese prince initiating this movement
that deeply modified European civilisation, does not have the same
significance at all. On the one hand, one is reading a trend, where
one sees another Europe taking shape, a trend that spreads and
transforms the economy, the culture, the exchanges of the
countries. On the other, one follows the singular course of a man.
To know this trajectory is worthy of interest for whomever is
interested in history, but the really European topic is the topic
of the "discoveries". Thus there are a number of historical
characters, national figures one could say, whose actions modified
their own country or territory and influenced the history of Europe
one way or another.
real figures or characters
|
This category concerns real characters:
politicians, monks, soldiers, people from the world of letters,
sciences, philosophy and arts, explorers, sportsmen, inventors,
etc... This "gallery" of figures or characters aims not only at
referring to a remote past, but at enabling work on the recent
past, even on contemporary characters, i.e. on a heritage
constituting itself that could touch a very different public. They
raise a paradoxical question: "are people themselves part of the
heritage of people?"
|
Souvenirs of the royal Jubilee
|
mythical and legendary figures - fiction
characters
This second category proves more difficult to pin
down. Indeed, from ancient mythology to the comic strip, crossing
the epic, mediaeval literature and folk legends, there is an
abundance of possibilities. Consequently, we have to place them
within certain perspectives, inter alia:
- How to treat certain real characters that form the object of
mythical or legendary constructions, in particular via the
enchanted Christian?
- Is it possible, in addition, to privilege the characters whose
mythical dimension constitutes a significant element of European
identity? (for example, Ulysses or King Arthur)
- In certain cases, who is the most interesting subject, the
author or the fiction creature? (for example, Cervantes or
Don Quixote, Hergé or Tintin?)
- Which types of fictions: those of literature, theatre, cinema,
comic strip, televised series, etc...?
|
|
|
This heading of the site thus opens for us another
chapter of the dialogue that we start with our readers, on the
question of European identities. Our choices will initially aim at
proposing a new reading of the chosen characters and figures and at
diversifying this choice on both historical and geographical level.
We shall also choose them according to circumstances or places with
which we can establish a relation within the general framework of
the topics of routes retained by the Council of Europe and
depending on the partners with whom we work on the interpretation
of heritage.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 news
|
|
|
|
documents
|
|
|
|
media library
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
home page