Ecocriticism avant la lettre: human–animal encounters in colonial travelogues by Gautier, Fromentin, Lorrain, Loti and Maupassant

Abstract

ABSTRACTEcocritical human–animal encounters, animal semiotics and literary depictions of human–animal relations in French colonial accounts of travel to Algeria and Morocco in the nineteenth century are the focus of this essay. Authors studied include Guy de Maupassant (Au Soleil), Eugène Fromentin (Une année dans le Sahel), Théophile Gautier (Loin de Paris), Jean Lorrain (Heures d’Afrique) and Pierre Loti (Au Maroc). Human–animal encounters decisively shape the travellers’ perception and understanding of the people and culture they encounter. They are a synecdoche for the French colonisers’ encounter with North Africa, its people, nature and customs. Highlighting their conquering mind-set, the travellers feel the need to write in great detail about these encounters which must be textualisés [inscribed], rationalised and thus safely “contained” in order to be intellectually possessed by the travellers. To date, ecocritical scholarship has neglected Orientalist travel writings, which were stigmatised for perpetuating imperialist discourse and serving the imperialist colonial project.