Exotic Subversions in Nineteenth-Century French Fiction

by Yee; Jennifer

• ISBN13: 9781905981519
• ISBN10: 1905981511
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In the course of the nineteenth century France built up a colonial empire second only to Britains. The literary tradition in which it dealt with its colonial 'Other' is frequently understood in terms of Edward Said's description of Orientalism as both a Western projection and a 'will to govern' over the Orient. There is, however, a body of works that eludes such a simple categorisation, offering glimpses of colonial resistance, of a critique of imperialist hegemony, or of a blurring of the boundaries between the Self and the Other. Some of the ways in which the imperialist enterprise is subverted in the metropolitan literature of this period are examined in this volume through detailed case studies of key works by Chateaubriand, Hugo, Flaubert and Segalen.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Shifting Ideologies in Chateaubriand's Epic Les Natchez	p. 25
Victor Hugo and the Other as Divided Self Bug-Jargal	p. 45
Flaubert's Salammbo and the Subversion of Meaning	p. 63
Exotic Polyphony: Victor Segalen and Les Immemoriaux	p. 83
Conclusion	p. 105
Bibliography	p. 113
Index	p. 121
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