In the prologue of Une histoire modèle, Raymond Queneau explains that he began writing this essay in July 1942 and that he wanted to title it, inspired by the mathematician Girard Desargues (1591-1661), Brouillon projet d'une atteinte à une science absolue de l'histoire -A project for an essay on an absolute science of history-. Although unfinished, he abandoned this project in October of that same year, after having written the first 96 chapters, some only formed by a few lines. In 1966 he decided to publish it as he had left it in 1942, although changing its title.
A model story is a mathematical 'aspect' meditation on History, to which the author qualifies as: L'Histoire est la science du malheur des hommes-History is the science of the misfortune of men.
Queneau also comments in the introduction that his sources are easily identifiable, among them the Leçons sur la théorie mathématique de la lutte pour la vie (Gauthier-Villars, 1931) -Lections on the mathematical theory of the struggle for life-by Vito Volterra (1860-1940) and the writings of other authors who believed they could demonstrate the existence of cycles throughout history.
Queneau thinks that History only exists because there are wars, revolutions or different catastrophes: if such events do not take place, only Annals would exist at the most. He also insists that:
As the paremiology affirms, the happy towns do not have History. History is the science of the misfortune of men.
His goal with the book is to show that History is a science, discovering the correlation between astronomical phenomena, climatic, etc. and the cyclical events.
If there were no misfortunes, there would be nothing to tell. Otherwise, happiness is homogeneous, misfortune changes.
It speaks, for example, of the Golden Age - human beings get food without working and without thinking that their food may be lacking - and of the different crises that can lead to its disappearance. It even assigns to each human group a coefficient that measures its capacity to prevent catastrophes: if its capacity is null, the group is called blind, and it alludes then to the myth of Cassandra. Among the descriptions of the Golden Age that appear in the text, one of them is mathematics (chapter 21):
Let N (t) be the number of members of the group at time t, Q (N) the amount of food consumed each year by the group, Q the amount of absolute food obtained without working in the territory occupied by the group, considering that It has no neighbors and it must not fear other animal species. There is a crisis when Q (N) = Q, N (t) is assumed to be increasing and therefore Q (N). Let T be the time of crisis, T 'the time of Cassandra (purely hypothetical during this first epoch). There is a Golden Age while T '> T.
Another example of mathematical modeling is found in chapter 30, in which Queneau performs a mathematical study of two species, one voracious and the other devoured: this model alludes men and plants again.
The discussion continues in this way, making the author a curious analysis trying to find patterns of cycles in the history of humanity and its possible causes ...