Aux sources du roman colonial (1863 1914): l'Afrique a la fin du XIXe siecle

Abstract

‘Sous tous les rapports, le roman populaire est un opérateur de lisibilité des fantasmes collectifs’ (p. 22). This major contribution to scholarship joins and effectively supersedes a very short list of previous studies on the area and fills an important gap in our awareness of fiction which helped shape contemporary and still often current attitudes in France towards Africa and Africans. The roman colonial proper, written by colons, dates from the inter-war years: this book retraces the emerging mindset as determined and disseminated by armchair adventurers. While considerable attention had previously been given to Jules Verne, whose Cinq semaines en ballon provides the starting-date for this study, his work had never been contextualized in the 35,000 pages of novels bravely covered by the exceptionally well informed Professor Seillan. ‘Réexaminer et non réhabiliter’ (p. 8) is a judicious watchword, and no extravagant claims are made for the popular adventure novels which dominate his corpus. Such lucidity is apparent throughout, from the introduction, which sets out literary antecedents, generic tendencies, period ideology and narrative typology, through five main sections — ‘Les Explorateurs’, ‘Les Aventuriers’, ‘Les Politiques’, ‘Les Fondateurs’ and ‘Pour une topique du roman d'aventures coloniales’ — to a trenchant conclusion, followed by a full bibliography and an invaluable index of names.