 Duby's interest in the idea of historical "mentalities" extended to thinking about the position of contemporary society vis-a-vis its past.In "Le Dimanche de Bouvines" (1973) on the pivotal 1214 battle of Bouvines, Duby chose not to analyze the battle itself, but the ways it had been represented and remembered over time and the role its memory had played in the formation of French ideas about its medieval past.The book remains a classic of "Annales"-style historiography, eschewing the "great man" and event-oriented theories of political history in favor of asking questions about the evolution of historical perceptions and ideas over the long term, the "longue durée".