Crossing the frontier to a fictional world: the way to Siberia in nineteenth century French popular literature

Abstract

This paper examines Siberia as a fictional world imagined by the French literature of the nineteenth century. It starts by drawing a distinction between the contemporary knowledge on real Siberia and the stereotypical features of fictional “Siberia”, a huge plane eternally covered by snow and situated beyond a line going from Saint-Petersburg to Moscow. In order to define this world, this essay focuses particularly on the way its borders are defined through the feelings expressed by characters in novels and plays. The paper goes on to analyze the access to fictional Siberia, especially the passage of Urals in novels of Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne, which mark it as the way into an imaginary world of cold exoticism. It finally considers a vaudeville by Lherie et Brunswick dating from 1836: by staging a simulated trip to Siberia, this play allows its audience to follow the construction of an imaginary Siberia. Comparable to fictional immersion, this process unveils fictional Siberia as a giant playground built for a game of “make believe”.