Émigré Writers and Writing about Émigrés

Abstract

In any consideration of the literature produced and inspired by the Emigration it is useful to distinguish between the writing with a direct political purpose, like Lally’s Defense, and that which had an indirect political purpose, like Chateaubriand’s Genie du Christianisme or Mme de Stael’s Corinne. This allows the reader to separate the polemical literature with a more limited lifespan from those works which are considered to belong to the ‘literature’ of the early nineteenth century. After the Restoration, there was no need to continue the propaganda assault on the Republic which effectively put the emigre press out of business. It was not until the 1830s that renewed attacks on emigres in a different and new political climate prompted a fresh burst of political writings and memoirs. It is, therefore, in the literature (not only French but also British) which goes beyond the chronological dates of the Revolution and Empire that the legacy of the emigration can be more fully appreciated. Chateaubriand and Mme de Stael are examples of writers whose emigre connections have been considered unimportant but whose emigre experiences shed much light on their work.