The Emergence of the French Public Intellectual provides a working
definition of "public intellectuals" in order to clarify who they are
and what they do. It then follows their varied itineraries from the
Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the
nineteenth century. Public intellectuals became a fixture in French
society during the Dreyfus Affair but have a long history in France, as
the contributions of Christine de Pizan, Voltaire, and Victor Hugo,
among many others, illustrate. The French novelist Émile Zola launched
the Dreyfus Affair when he published "J'Accuse," an open letter to
French President Félix Faure denouncing a conspiracy by the government
and army against Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish and had been
wrongly convicted of treason three years earlier. The consequent
emergence of a publicly-engaged intellectual created a new, modern space
in intellectual life as France and the world confronted the challenges
of the twentieth century.