These fields of interest were tied together through his chaired position in Burgundian history, literature and patois at the University of Dijon. He employed his historical training, ethnographic expertise and empathetic imagination to investigate the ecological and structural links between evolving agrarian patterns and the daily lives of local elites and ordinary people. Well received by contemporary popular audiences and academic audiences, Roupnel’s scholarship– which included contributions in philosophy, history, fiction, journalism, geography and current affairs– focused primarily on Burgundy’s Dijonnais region from the early sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. With one foot in nineteenth-century philosophical traditions and the other in the social sciences of the 1920s and 1930s, Roupnel practiced historical geography a time when the French were preoccupied, in turn, by economic and demographic resilience following World War I, rural depression and depopulation during the 1920s, “return to the soil” themes throughout the 1930s, and a renewed search for cultural roots immediately after World War II. His career also serves to recall how uneven and heterogeneous were historical dispositions and outlooks during this transitional period. The life and works of Gaston Roupnel shed light on the rich cultural setting and professional environment from which the modern French historical profession slowly and unevenly emerged during the early twentieth century. In that unfortunate event, the whole of French viticulture would soon disappear” (174). It would be a still greater shame, however, if these modern methods were used to standardize their wines with a view to imitating certain styles currently popular in North America and the southern hemisphere. His historical overview of the geography, culture and economy of French winemaking along with the evolution of consumers' tastes is calculated to make the brothers Bordeaux and Burgundy, their extended family of enthusiasts, and the French wine industry realize that this rivalry is really a “shared passion for excellence” (xiii) that entails analogous practices and shared challenges in the present era of international competition, blind tastings, climate change, and technological development: “It would be a shame if French viticulturalists were not to profit from all the wonderful contributions of new technologies, which do not in the least prevent them from expressing their own personality in the wines they make. Professor Pitte, of course, has a rather more ambitious agenda and messier terrain to cover. To that end, the English language edition of Bordeaux Bourgogne: Les passions rivales (2005) begins with a tale of “two brothers” who represent “opposite civilizations” (xii) and “show little more than disdain for each other” (xiv). His book is not calculated “to provoke or settle scores” but is designed instead, the author signals early on, “to sharpen the critical spirit” (xii). In a field frequently dominated by the pronouncements of gurus, oenologists, vintners, pundits, wine experts and self-styled amateurs of radically diverging opinion and expertise, Jean-Robert Pitte’s treatment of the history of Bordeaux’ and Burgundy’s wine industries comes across as retrained and diplomatic.
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