FREN 101: "Le Héros en question" (HC) Fall 2015

Three volumes in seven parts. Copies also at BMC and Swarthmore.

Third edition.

Sick Heroes examines the cultural practices that created those remarkably offensive, though strangely appealing, romantic heroes that appeared in European and especially in French literature in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Romanticism has long been considered a literary movement, but Pasco broadens its scope and suggests that it was a cultural reality born of widespread social factors and sustained by a mass market for novels, poems and plays that popularized attitudes and behaviour.

Datta examines representations of fictional and real heroes in the boulevard theater and mass press during the fin de siecle (1880–1914), illuminating the role of gender in the construction of national identity during this formative period of French history. The popularity of the heroic cult at this time was in part the result of defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, as well as a reaction to changing gender roles and collective guilt about the egoism and selfishness of modern consumer culture. The author analyzes representations of historical figures in the theater, focusing on Cyrano de Bergerac, Napoleon and Joan of Arc, and examines the press coverage of heroes and anti-heroes in the Bazar de la Charité fire of 1897 and the Ullmo spy case of 1907.

From the height of 'New Imperialism' until the Second World War, three generations of heroes of the British and French empires in Africa were selected, manufactured and packaged for consumption by a metropolitan public eager to discover new horizons and to find comfort in the concept of a 'civilising mission'. This book looks at imperial heroism by examining the legends of a dozen major colonial figures on both sides of the Channel, revisiting the familiar stories of Livingstone, Gordon and Kitchener under a radically new angle, and throwing light on their French counterparts, often less famous in the Anglophone world but certainly equally fascinating.

La France est un étrange pays que son histoire divise, une vieille nation où l'héritage du passé prend souvent la forme de batailles pour la mémoire, un théâtre où s'affrontent implacablement le Bien et le Mal, la Loge et le Clocher, la Vérité révélée et la Foi laïque. Conservateur à la Bibliothèque nationale et, à ce titre, "trésorier" de notre mémoire, Christian Amalvi était mieux placé que puiconque pour mettre en scène cette pièce de théâtre qu'est l'histoire de France, pour dessiner le portrait des acteurs qui portent les masques de Vercingétorix, Hugues Capet, Philippe Auguste et Etienne Marcel, pour arpenter ces "lieux de mémoire" où chaque camp vient puiser des arguments pour terrasser l'adversaire.

Exhibition catalog from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.