Maurice Halbwachs launched the term collective memory (la mémoire collective) in 1925 with the publication of his book Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. In this work and in his posthumous La mémoire collective, he proposed a provocative theory about the relationship between shared memories and personal memories. Since the appearance of these works, the concept of collective memory has been debated, attacked, and reworked by many scholars. This term appeared only recently, but the notion that societies have shared memories can be found throughout the Western tradition in relation to the concepts of fame, history, tradition, and books, for example. In French texts before Halbwachs, shared memories were most often referred to using the word mémoire or with phrases such as la mémoire des hommes or la mémoire des livres.

In this paper, I will survey several aspects of the conception of shared memories from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century in the dictionaries from the period and in texts such as Montaigne’s Essais, the Encyclopédie, and in the works of Michelet. I will focus on the medium and scope of collective memory and on the relationship between collective memory, fame, and life during this period.