Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination by Pratima Prasad

Abstract

learn, said nothing of the sort, only that Voltaire wrote (or perhaps revised) Zadig, Babouc, and other tales during his stay at Sceaux. Other less dramatic incidents include the “broken axle story” in which Voltaire and Mme Du Châtelet, stranded on a wintry night, contemplated the starry cosmos propped up on cushions and wrapped in furs: “Ravis du magnifique spectacle déployé au-dessus d’eux, ils dissertaient, en grelottant, sur la nature et le cours des astres, sur la destination de tant de globes immenses répandus dans l’espace” (178). We now know that none of this took place; that the mise en scène was entirely invented by Decroix. In short, this first edition of Longchamp’s manuscript constitutes a major and refreshing breakthrough in Voltaire studies; it demonstrates how an idea floated many years ago by Barber has inspired a new generation of scholarly investigation. St. Francis Xavier University (NS, Canada) Édouard Langille PRASAD, PRATIMA. Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2009. ISBN 978-0-415-99467-5. Pp. xii + 192. $103. Prasad looks at six authors: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, Claire de Duras, Victor Hugo, Prosper Mérimée, and George Sand. She analyzes both canonical and little-known texts; even much-studied works, Paul et Virginie, Indiana, and Atala, are discussed from fresh points of view—such as Chateaubriand ’s nostalgia for France’s lost colonies: “Chateaubriand’s Indian is a product of the author’s remorse over the lost possibilities of a French America” (74). Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie has been examined by numerous scholars, but his La chaumière indienne, with its contrasting relationship of exogamy , remains largely unstudied. While Atala is one of Chateaubriand’s most analyzed texts, Les Natchez has received relatively little critical attention. Mérimée’s Tamango provides a rich comparison, in terms of slave revolt, with Hugo’s better-known Bug-Jargal. In her discussion of Duras’s Ourika, Prasad includes what she calls the “Ourika archive,” with unfamiliar spin-offs, La nouvelle Ourika and La négresse. The study shows how the Romantics built upon ideas of the Enlightenment as well as on those of their contemporaries (Prasad has selected her texts from one revolution to the next, from 1789 to 1830). She cites historians, race theorists, ethnographers, abolitionists, biological scientists, and travel writers. Five character types provide the book’s organizing principle: the White Native, the Métis, the Disciplined Savage, the Black Aristocrat, and the Rebellious Slave. Within the five chapters, Prasad has grouped her analyses to reveal the differences between colonial policy in areas of North America where intermarriage was encouraged, and the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, where miscegenation could undermine slave society. The volume explores many topics, such as the Romantic obsession with incest (the ultimate endogamy, as Prasad points out), the development of the concept of “race” in the natural sciences, the evolution of French colonial policy, and the representation of black masculinity “within the customary Romantic conceptualizations of masculine subjectivity” (128). Equally important, however, are what Prasad terms the “furtive, awkward, and roundabout allusions as they express the full range of postures toward racial mixing” (48). This inclusion of the “furtive, awkward, and roundabout”—and the gaps, the silences—has produced 562 FRENCH REVIEW 85.3 a thoroughly fascinating study where all literary scholars, not just those of French Romanticism, will find much to appreciate. One important additional aspect deserves mention here. I would also recommend this book to undergraduates beginning their study of literature, above all for its limpid writing. Prasad incorporates theories of various types with ease, but she carefully avoids jargon. She guides her readers with useful signposts, defining her terms (e.g. miscegenation), signaling transitions to future sections of a chapter, or justifying her choices. Because a reviewer must consider even minor questions, however, I should point out some inconsistencies in the capitalization of both English and French titles in the bibliography. Such quibbling aside, this splendid essay cannot but be considered exemplary. Occidental College (CA) Annabelle M. Rea REED, CHRISTOPHER. The Chrysanthème Papers: The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanth ème and Other...