While Adams clearly knows a great deal of history of the period, his aim is not further historical investigation, but rather an almost poetic understanding of that worldview. But it would be hard to imagine a more misleading description than to call it a tour guide.” Adams uses the metaphor of tour throughout the book, and refers to the readers as “tourists,” but the tour is less one of a landscape and more one of a worldview. “Preceding the title page of the first edition of Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams placed the heading ‘TRAVELS-FRANCE.”. Superficially, the book is framed as a travel journal. Raymond Carney has said of this pair of works: “Taken together they may be read as Adams’ spiritual autobiography-two monumental volumes in which he attempts to bring together in a vast synthesis all of his knowledge of politics, economics, psychology, science, philosophy, art, and literature in order to attempt to understand the individual’s place in history and society.”
Despite having a far less serious intent than his earlier historical writings, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres has garnered high praise: for example, Maurice le Briton said, “ Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres is undoubtedly Adams's greatest work though not apparently related to his earlier writings, this inspired work of poetry is the crowning achievement of his severe and somber historical oeuvre.” A few years after Adams published Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, he published his most famous work, the Education of Henry Adams in 1907. It was published privately in 1904, originally intended simply for his nieces in 1913, it was made more widely available when published with the support of the American Institute of Architects. Whereas the latter is a serious academic work of history, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres is far more whimsical, a playful meditative reflection on medieval culture.
Adams wrote this book, a meditative reflection on medieval culture, well after his historical masterpiece, The History of the United States of America (1801–1817). Mont Saint Michel and Chartres is a book written by the American historian and scholar Henry Adams (1838–1918).
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