Colonizer or Colonized : The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture

Sara E Melzer

ISBN 10: 0812243633 / ISBN 13: 9780812243635

Published by University Of Pennsylvania Press Feb 2012, 2012

About this Item

Neuware - This innovative analysis of sixteen- and seventeenth-century France introduces colonization into the heart of the nation's literary history by demonstrating how French classical culture and colonialism emerged together, each shaping the other.

Seller Inventory # 9780812243635

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Colonizer or Colonized : The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture
• Publisher: University Of Pennsylvania Press Feb 2012
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812243633
• ISBN 13: 9780812243635
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 229W x 155H x 33D millimeters 229 millimeters width by 155 millimeters height by 33 millimeters depth
• Weight: 617 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Colonizer or Colonized introduces two colonial stories into the heart of France's literary and cultural history. The first describes elite France's conflicted relationship to the Ancient World. As much as French intellectuals aligned themselves with the Greco-Romans as an "us," they also resented the Ancients as an imperial "them," haunted by the memory that both the Greeks and Romans had colonized their ancestors, the Gauls. This memory put the elite on the defensive—defending against the legacy of this colonized past and the fear that they were the barbarian other. The second story mirrored the first. Just as the Romans had colonized the Gauls, France would colonize the New World, becoming the "New Rome" by creating a "New France." Borrowing the Roman strategy, the French Church and State developed an assimilationist stance towards the Amerindian "barbarian." This policy provided a foundation for what would become the nation's most basic stance towards the other. However, this version of assimilation, unlike its subsequent ones, encouraged the colonized and the colonizer to engage in close forms of contact, such as mixed marriages and communities.

This book weaves these two different stories together in a triangulated dynamic. It asks the Ancients to step aside to include the New World other into a larger narrative in which elite France carved out their nation's emerging cultural identity in relation to both the New World and the Ancient World.

About the Author

Sara E. Melzer is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Discourses of the Fall: A Study of Pascal's Pensees and coeditor of From the Royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France.