Creole Medievalism: Colonial France and Joseph Bédier’s Middle Ages [1 ed.] 0816665257, 9780816665259

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CREOLE MEDIEVALISM

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Creole Medievalism . . . . Colonial France and Joseph Bédier’s Middle Ages

Michelle R. Warren

University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London

The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges financial assistance provided for the publication of this book by the Office of the Dean of Faculty and the David Bloom and Leslie Chao Fellowship, Dartmouth College. Portions of chapters 3, 4, and 5 were previously published in “Au commencement était l’île: The Colonial Formation of Joseph Bédier’s Chanson de Roland,” in Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne M. Williams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 205–26. Portions of chapter 5 also appeared in “The Noise of Roland,” Exemplaria 16, no. 2 (2004): 277–304. Reprinted with permission.

Copyright 2011 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Warren, Michelle R., 1967– Creole medievalism : colonial France and Joseph Bédier's Middle Ages / Michelle R. Warren. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8166-6525-9 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-6526-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bédier, Joseph, 1864–1938 — Knowledge — Middle Ages. 2. Bédier, Joseph, 1864– 1938—Knowledge—Réunion. 3. Bédier, Joseph, 1864–1938—Knowledge—French literature. 4. Réunion— History. 5. Réunion— In literature. 6. Medievalism — Réunion. 7. France—Colonies—Africa. 8. National characteristics, French. 9. Réunion—Relations — France. 10. France — Relations —Réunion. I. Title. PQ67.B4W37 2010 840.9 — dc22 2009035370 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

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Contents Acknowledgments

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Introduction: Joseph Bédier and the Imperial Nation

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1. Roncevaux and Réunion

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2. Medieval and Colonial Attractions

26

3. Between Paris and Saint-Denis

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4. Island Philology

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5. A Creole Epic

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6. Postcolonial Itineraries

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Afterword: Medieval Debris

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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Acknowledgments

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his book began with a seemingly small question: why did Joseph Bédier dedicate his edition of the Chanson de Roland to an island named Bourbon? The search for answers led me far afield in more ways than one, and I have been fortunate to benefit from the generosity and expertise of numerous friends, colleagues, strangers, librarians, and archivists. I could not have imagined this project without the indulgence and encouragement of my colleagues and students at the University of Miami, especially in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. In formative moments, my department nurtured adventurous thinking in a supportive collegial environment, sharing ideas across languages and disparate fields of specialization. In the final stages of the project, I found a new and welcoming home at Dartmouth College. On Réunion, I spent many productive hours at the Bibliothèque de l’Université de la Réunion, especially in the Salle de l’Océan Indien. At the Archives Départementales, Nadine Rouayroux (director), Emmanuelle Vidal, Corinne Hivanhoé, and others provided invaluable assistance. At the Musée Léon Dierx, Laurence Lecieux led me to discover the fascinating work of Sarkis, while Nathalie Gonthier and Maryse Duchêne provided copies of materials from inaccessible archives. Administrators of the Collège de Bourbon and the Lycée de Leconte de Lisle graciously answered my inquiries about long-disappeared archives. Alain Vauthier, director of the Bibliothèque Départementale, shared his personal interest in Joseph Bédier and introduced me to Adrien Bédier. Adrien and Lillian Bédier welcomed me most kindly into their home, sharing photographs, newspaper clippings, and thoughts on family history. Y. Chan Kam Lon, director of the National Library of Mauritius, sent precious photocopies of rare newspaper articles. In Paris, I followed in the archival footsteps of Alain Corbellari, whose bibliography of manuscript sources guided me through my early searches for Bédier’s colonial memories. Corbellari has been a genial correspondent · vii ·

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throughout this project, generously providing an electronic typescript of his forthcoming edition of Bédier’s letters. At the Collège de France, Mme Maury graciously shared her cramped archival quarters for long days at a time. Dominique Parcollet, director of the Archives d’Histoire Contemporaine, helped me to resolve several obscure biographical points. Librarians at the Bibliothèque de l’Institut and Archives de l’Académie Française pointed me toward new materials. Finally, Christophe Bédier generously made time, on short notice, to discuss family history and to share valuable documents. In the United States, I benefited enormously from the resources of university libraries and their interlibrary loan departments. At the University of Miami, Cecilia Leathem offered material and personal support over the years; at Dartmouth College, Miguel Valladares has shown more enthusiasm for my research than I imagined possible. I spent productive time at the New York Public Library (especially the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture) and the Wolfsonian Museum and Library in Miami Beach (whose entire staff made work both enjoyable and efficient). Student research assistants consistently lightened the labors of research and propelled me to read faster: my enduring thanks to Khaleem Mohammed-Ali, Oona O’Connell, and Gabrielle Rapke (at the University of Miami), and to Maria-Bethlehem Pal-Laya (at Dartmouth College), who wrestled valiantly with the technicalities of digital imaging. My research was generously supported by several institutions. Early on, I spent a glorious semester at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. The University of Miami subsequently provided a number of travel and research grants that made possible trips to Paris and Réunion, research assistance, and a highly productive semester of leave. More recently, I spent enjoyable and stimulating time in residence at the University of Melbourne (thanks to Stephanie Trigg) and the Wolfsonian Museum of Florida International University. Dartmouth College’s John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding awarded support for further travel to Réunion as well as a phenomenal seminar discussion of a complete draft of the manuscript. For their insightful participation on that occasion, and ongoing encouragement, I am deeply indebted to Peggy McCracken and Herman Lebovics, and to my Dartmouth colleagues Margaret Darrow, Mary Jean Green, Monika Otter, Andrea Tarnowski, and Keith Walker. I  profited immensely from their critical challenges as well as from their collective incitement to “say more.”

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I have been most fortunate to receive incisive commentary on manuscript drafts from Jean-Claude Carpanin Marimoutou, Andrew Cowell, Margaret Burland, Bed Giri, Scott Lyngaas, members of the Medieval Seminar at Dartmouth, members of the Pre-Modern Colloquium at the University of Michigan, and members of the Humanities Colloquium at the University of Miami. Audiences at the Johns Hopkins University, Florida State University, University of Melbourne, and University of Wisconsin all helped sharpen my thinking. Jody Enders and Deborah Jenson read the manuscript for the University of Minnesota Press, offering insightful critiques as well as much welcomed reassurance. My thanks to Richard Morrison at the University of Minnesota Press for his enthusiasm for this project. For pivotal conversations along the way, I am grateful to Marc Brudzinski, Mark Burde, Keith Busby, Yvan Combeau, Lisa Cooper, George Edmondson, Elizabeth Emery, Prosper Eve, John Ganim, Gilles Gauvin, Ralph Heyndels, Sharon Kinoshita, John Kopper, Françoise Lionnet, Donald Maddox, Lillian Manzor, Klaus Mladek, Stephen Nichols, Mireille Rosello, Helen Solterer, Gabrielle Spiegel, Stephanie Trigg, and Françoise Vergès. I wish to thank my parents, Carol and Chuck Warren, for bravely sending me to France to ride horses: I owe so much to that fateful summer. Above all, I cherish Rebecca Biron, who believed in this book long before I did, and Quinn, who likes the pictures but doesn’t remember Réunion.

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· INTRODUCTION ·

Joseph Bédier and the Imperial Nation

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’est comme si j’arrivais du Moyen Age et c’est pareil pour tous les autres Réunionnais, on est sauvages, on ne sait pas vivre.” [It’s like I came from the Middle Ages, and it’s the same for all the other Réunionnais, we are savages, we don’t know how to live.] This statement describes the experience of a young migrant factory worker, arriving in France in the mid-1960s from the Indian Ocean island of Réunion. Instinctively, he likens his sense of cultural alienation to temporal distance—“it’s like I came from the Middle Ages.”1 Judging himself and his compatriots as uncivilized “savages” who do not know how to live, he identifies the difference between France and its island as one of both time and space. His comment reveals the great distances that Réunionnais travel to reach “France” — only to find themselves as far as ever from their fellow citizens. In literal terms, their differences can include geography, climate, language, culture, religion, and race. By aligning these differences with France’s own origins in the Middle Ages, this particular young man articulates the colonial paradox by which migrants identify simultaneously with colonizing and colonized perspectives: only as a “metropolitan” can he judge himself a “savage”; only as a “modern” can he see himself as “medieval.” By identifying the medieval with the absence of civilization, this Réunionnais migrant echoes succinctly the denials of history that so often characterize colonialist discourse.2 This “negative” version of what I will call “creole medievalism” finds its “positive” counterpart in the judgment of another Réunionnais migrant who turned to the Middle Ages as he grappled with the shocks of cultural difference — Joseph Bédier (1864– 1938), the most influential scholar of medieval French literature of his era. In the 1920s, almost fifty years after arriving in Paris, Bédier uncannily presaged, and inverted, the judgment of his compatriot: “I am not a man of the present, but of the Middle Ages; I’m at least six centuries behind. I come to you from a faraway France, that of St. Louis.”3 For Bédier, “coming from the Middle Ages” is a badge of honor, not disgrace; his expression · xi ·

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“faraway France” associates colonial territory with the prestige of a medieval crusader (Louis IX, 1214–70). For Bédier, distant times and distant places converge into a deeply secure sense of national belonging. Indeed, Bédier first encountered the Middle Ages growing up on Réunion, where at age fourteen he read the epic La Chanson de Roland under the mango tree of his family home in the capital Saint-Denis. Bédier and his fellow migrant both conjoin the Middle Ages to their Réunionnais identity — the one to assert prestige, the other to characterize estrangement. Both live in a time lag. They articulate two ends of the spectrum of “creole medievalism” developed in this book. Throughout France’s Third Republic (1871–1940) and into the present, both the medieval and the colonial attract idealizations (like Bédier’s) and denigrations (like the factory worker’s). If the Middle Ages can reference either glory or barbarism, colonialism can imply “promised land” or “hell on earth.” As medieval studies and the empire both expanded after 1870, idealizations supported potent forms of national belonging for Bédier, for his elite Réunionnais contemporaries, and for the nation as a whole. Meanwhile, denigrations supported efforts to subjugate rural and overseas populations and to exclude them from national citizenship. Along the spectrum between these diametrically opposed valuations, creole medievalism challenges the traditional binarisms of imperial discourse. On contemporary Réunion especially, creole medievalism joins a myriad of other strategies for representing postcolonial society. While medievalism can never veer too far from the imperial conditions that brought memories of distant times to Réunion, creative claims on the Middle Ages hold out the possibility of moving beyond colonial dualities (civilization/savagery, inclusion/exclusion, etc.). The productive powers of hybridity, syncretism, and métissage extend to the Middle Ages themselves, prompting further critique of their ideological alignment with simplified “positives” and “negatives.” Altogether, then, “creole medievalism” designates a proliferating set of contradictory claims born of numerous dislocations between Réunion and France, and between past and present. Creole medievalism ultimately functions in at least three clearly identifiable ways: in support of homogeneous national history, in opposition to that history, and in mixed formations that defy singular conclusions. In the course of this book, I seek to unravel some of the many threads that make up creole medievalism, including the academic practice of

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medieval French studies, Réunionnais history and literature, and French political culture during the Third Republic. I hope that Creole Medievalism will contribute meaningfully to each of these broad areas. For medieval French studies, Bédier’s personal and scholarly debts to colonial experience make his vision of the Middle Ages decidedly “creole.” The fact that this vision exerted such influence over the modern study of medieval French literature, and that few scholars today know much if anything about Bédier’s connections to Réunion, suggests that unacknowledged colonial formations have shaped literary histories in ways that still structure scholarly inquiry. Understanding the creation, diffusion, and impact of Bédier’s particular creole medievalism can thus make visible the “colonization” of medieval France in the nineteenth century and contribute to its “decolonization” in the twenty-first. For French cultural history more broadly, Bédier’s biography and his many interactions with other Réunionnais reveal some of the unique relations between the island and French national culture. A creole history of the Third Republic exposes the inadequacies of dividing the empire into dualistic categories (oppressors/oppressed, white/black, etc.). It underscores the constitutive dynamics of “imperial formations” as “polities of dislocation, processes of dispersion, appropriation, and displacement.”4 A creole history of France thus de-centers some of the standard narratives of both nationalism and colonialism since 1870. It facilitates a history that accounts for the imperial and the national within a single analytic frame, thereby challenging the binary oppositions claimed by colonialism.5 Réunion illustrates clearly the centrality of empire to French national identity. Most importantly, creole histories remind us that the homogeneity claimed by the république une et indivisible has not been lost in recent times (as some lament): it has in fact always been a coercive fiction. As Nicolas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard phrase it: “the nation is a permanent conquest.”6 Bédier himself defined France in revealing imperial terms: “I belong to one of those overseas Frances which, some under the tricolor flag, others under the flag of an allied people, contribute to the greatness of France— one and indivisible.”7 Defining colonies as so many refractions of France, Bédier affirms the imperial basis of the indivisible Republic. His own contributions to fictions of national unity make his biography a rich locus of imperial history. Through creole medievalism, he gave the imperial nation a long and prestigious history that begins and ends overseas.

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Medieval Réunion

Réunion, situated about 450 miles east of Madagascar and just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, is one of France’s oldest and most distant overseas colonies. Despite its isolation from other French dominions, it has long served as a symbolic condensation of French national identity—a “second France” or “second metropole” in the Indian Ocean. Part of that centrality has been imprinted through medievalism. First claimed by France in 1638, the island received the name “Bourbon” from Étienne de Flacourt (on behalf of the East India Company) in 1649 in honor of the royal family — a dynasty that owed its legitimacy ultimately to Saint Louis himself (the Bourbons descended from his youngest son). Many of the island’s coastal towns were subsequently given the names of medieval saints, including Saint-Louis and Saint-Denis — the capital, named after France’s oldest saint and (not coincidentally) the sacred burial site of French kings just outside of Paris. The medieval saints imported prestigious national origins into the colony, asserting cultural continuity across great distances of time and space. They ostentatiously declared the island’s attachment to centers of European royal power and affirmed its ties to France’s most venerable medieval traditions. Thus, while Bédier claimed to come from the “time of Saint-Louis,” he also came from the place of “Saint-Louis.” The island’s name change at the time of the Revolution weakened its attachment to the legacy of the medieval monarchy, but maintained its symbolic centrality to the nation. The revolutionary Convention of 1793 changed the name to “Réunion,” a decree adopted (with resistance) on the island in 1794. Although republicans obviously saw advantages in displacing a royalist name, the decree gives no explanation of the choice of “Réunion.” Popular mythology has held that the name commemorates the “reunion” of revolutionaries from Réunion and neighboring Mauritius before a decisive battle in Paris.8 Others have attributed the name to a commemoration of the “reunion” of the national guard with the citizens of Marseille before the revolutionary assault on the Tuileries. Contemporary commentaries, however, interpret the name as a sign of the island’s “union” with the republican regime: in this perspective, “Réunion,” like “Bourbon,” declares both the island’s loyalty and the nation’s perfect unity [concorde] even across great distances.9 Each of these different explanations of “Réunion” translates in its own way metropolitan views of the island’s national importance: its inhabitants fight for France on French soil;

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it commemorates national (not local) history; it replicates faithfully the nation’s own most cherished values. Subsequent changes to the island’s name followed a similar imperative to imprint national identity: Napoleon’s representative General Decaen rechristened the island “Bonaparte” in 1806; the British signaled their legitimacy by restoring “Bourbon” when they captured the island in 1810; the French, under a monarchical regime, maintained the royalist commemoration when they regained control in 1815. The symbolic tradition continued with the restoration of “Réunion” at the beginning of the Second Republic in 1848 — and so it has remained, through the Second Empire (1852–70) and several succeeding republics. Insular resistance to metropolitan impositions, however, have kept “Bourbon” in constant use, even among ardent republicans. Bédier, for example, hardly ever used “Réunion.” When referring to his perspective and that of his contemporaries in this book, I also use “Bourbon.” Today, “Bourbon” and the saintly coastal towns (along with a fair number of places named “Jeanne d’Arc”) keep the island’s foundational medievalism in constant circulation. The changes in political régimes that instigated new names for the island also opened questions about its administrative status within the empire. Already at the time of the Revolution some talked of integrating Réunion within the national structure of départements. At the beginning of both the Second and Third Republics (1848, 1870), Réunionnais representatives again envisioned their island becoming a département.10 These republicanminded (and imperialist) Réunionnais saw départementalisation as a way to end the often oppressive policies of colonial governors (usually sent from Paris) and gain control over local affairs. They went on to embrace republican colonialism as empowering for both Réunion and the nation (especially in relation to Madagascar). At the same time, they often found themselves the target of colonialist deprivations. Indeed, in the 1870s, members of the National Assembly sought to eliminate colonial representation in the national government. Under the auspices of a new Republic in 1946, Réunionnais representatives once again supported départementalisation, this time successfully. They envisioned the establishment of democratic freedoms and, although vigorously anticolonial, sought recognition of the island’s cultural proximity to the metropole (that is, continental France). Theoretically, Réunion (along with Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Guyane) enjoyed the same status as any continental département. In practice, laws and resources did not automatically apply overseas. As the social

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promises of départementalisation failed to materialize, its initial supporters began agitating for greater autonomy (some even for independence). Meanwhile, those who had initially resisted départementalisation championed neocolonial reforms. These conflicts have subsided somewhat since the national government began decentralizing administrative processes in the 1980s, granting increased local control over local affairs. Nonetheless, Réunion (like France’s other DOMs—départements d’outre-mer) still lacks parity with continental départements in a number of ways—and questions of administrative status resurfaced as recently as 2000 and 2003.11 Debates over administrative status engage the very nature of Réunionnais identity, especially its degree of “Frenchness.” Uninhabited when the first Europeans arrived in the seventeenth century, the island’s culture has been shaped entirely by migration. Réunion thus occupies a distinctive place in French colonial history. In the seventeenth century, European, Malagasy, and Indian peoples settled the island —both voluntarily and forcibly (enslaved, exiled, indentured, etc.). As a strategic outpost on the sailing route from southern Africa to India, Réunion continually received new inhabitants of many different origins. After the official abolition of slavery in 1848, the French government arranged with Britain to contract indentured laborers from India (a practice that ended in the 1880s). Meanwhile, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the children of the island’s European elites commonly migrated to France for their education, sometimes at a very young age; some returned, many did not. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, voyages became more rapid and more frequent. During Bédier’s lifetime, most young men remained on the island until beginning their university studies. Réunionnais like Bédier were educated to assimilate seamlessly into metropolitan life in Paris. They nonetheless often encountered a disjunction between their own sense of “Frenchness” and the metropole’s rejection of them as inferior colonial subjects (even when they looked perfectly “European”). In this regard, Bédier’s experience of migration may not have been so different from that of his factory worker compatriot, who arrived in the metropole decades later through a government program designed to encourage (even force) migration to the continent. These kinds of programs made migration a coercive instrument of social policy in the second half of the twentieth century. Today, high population and low employment continue to exert pressures toward emigration, while Réunionnais in France live with

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the prospect of eventual return. Migration (in both directions) remains fraught with optimism and disappointment, economic opportunity and constraint, hopeful dreams and traumatic misunderstandings.12 One of the initial, and lasting, effects of migration has been the development of an exceptionally diverse society on Réunion, including many inhabitants with mixed racial and ethnic heritages. The predominance of mixing (métissage), alongside the tradition of identifying with metropolitan France, has given the term créole many meanings on Réunion. Within the broader scope of European colonial history, créole encompasses three mutually exclusive definitions, often in use simultaneously and with different historical developments in different places.13 From a Eurocentric perspective, créole designates white Europeans born in the colonies, who avoided intermarriage with other immigrants; this definition still appears in French dictionaries.14 Créole also can refer to anyone or anything of insular origin, regardless of their respective relations to Europe. Finally, créole can signify the mixing of races, cultures, and languages that takes place when groups of disparate origins live in close proximity. Créole thus encompasses a range of incompatible meanings: colonial Eurocentrism, overseas inhabitants of any race, the syncretic effects of colonial society. All three of these meanings were active on Réunion during the Third Republic. Elite white Réunionnais promoted the idea that créole referred exclusively to their own European lineages. Metropolitan observers imbued this same definition with negative connotations: Charles Baudelaire (the nineteenth-century French poet) considered creoles weak, feminine, and incapable of original thinking; Bédier himself was judged “languid” and “nonchalant.”15 Nonwhite Réunionnais, meanwhile, came to understand créole as a generic term of overseas citizenship, emphasizing the notion of “native islander of any color.”16 Finally, metropolitan travelers and ethnographers, even in the eighteenth century, refer to the “creole race” specifically as the descendents of interracial couples.17 The potential for slippage among these various understandings of créole has steeped the term in controversy. Créole on Réunion points simultaneously to inclusion and exclusion, island and metropole, blanchitude and métissage. It can seem overly identified with the specifics of Caribbean culture (as defined by the influential writings of Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant), with the utopian harmonies of the Réunionnais proponents of créolie, or with African filiations that exclude those of Asian ancestry.

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While some believe that créole can support a sense of collective Réunionnais identity, others prefer to circumvent its problematic heritage with terms such as Réunionnisme, Réunionnisation, and Réunionnité.18 Among the competing meanings of créole, white Réunionnais of Bédier’s era clung to Eurocentrism. They claimed créole as a term of elite culture and faithful allegiance to France that did not rightfully belong to the island’s nonwhite inhabitants. The most vocal ideologues of this view were Marius and Ary Leblond (pseudonyms of Georges Athénas and Aimé Merlo, prolific cultural activists). Looking back at the Third Republic from the vantage point of the mid-twentieth century, the Leblonds trace their vision of créole’s evolution: At first creole signifies exclusively the white man born in the colonies of European stock, an aristocracy that this word distinguishes from mixed bloods. After 1871 and universal suffrage, the latter—who descend from slaves or former immigrants — beating their chests sonorously, proclaim themselves creoles of color in order to place themselves above newly arrived immigrants and assure themselves increasing privileges.19 For the fanatically Eurocentric Leblonds, créole’s “hybrid” dimension emerges as an unwelcome side effect of republican enfranchisement. Rather than admit “mixed bloods” into the national culture, they open créole to recent European migrants, such that the term designates a superior form of Europeanness — one tempered by contact with the venerable French traditions preserved in the colony but lost in the metropole. The Leblonds thus laud the nineteenth-century Réunionnais poet Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle for his double claim to elite creole identity: “Creole by blood, Leconte de Lisle is also creole for the time he spent in his homeland.”20 According to the Leblonds, even a short stay in the colony could permanently transform a European into a creole: “You will hear [the young European who has returned to the metropole] laughingly throw about words of patois which are like the signs of a coat of arms of creole nobility.”21 By including nonnative Europeans among “authentic” creoles, the Leblonds negate the multiracial aspect of creole identity (“born in the colonies of any color”) in favor of racial purity (“born white in any place”). In these formulations, race determines culture.

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The Leblonds actively promoted an image of Bédier as exemplary of their Eurocentric definition of créole. Bédier himself vigorously proclaimed a purely European heritage as the descendent of aristocratic migrants who settled the island in the mid-eighteenth century. For Bédier, as for the Leblonds, créole signals a Réunionnais identification with French imperial ambitions. In order to represent this historical phenomenon, I will often use the term creole to reflect Bédier’s perspective as a white colonial “Bourbonnais.” Even Bédier’s créole, however, includes the effects of métissage (however disavowed). These dynamics of mixing become the focus of creole in the final two chapters, although they of course operate throughout the book: however stridently colonizing subjects claim cultural and genealogical homogeneity, the complex interactions and improvisations of insular life repeatedly intrude on their desires. Creole medievalism, in turn, functions as a multifaceted phrase, encompassing innumerable combinations of the many contradictory connotations of both “creole” and “medieval.” Joseph Bédier’s creole history begins with the migration of Jacques François Bédier Desjardins in 1746, supposedly exiled from France after a failed conspiracy against the king.22 Succeeding generations prospered as land and slave owners; according to family lore, one of them brought sugarcane cultivation to the island and started the first rum distillery.23 Joseph Bédier’s great-uncle, Philippe-Achille, became the island’s only creole administrator and an ardent proponent of the French conquest of Madagascar.24 Following the abolition of slavery in 1848 (which PhilippeAchille resisted), landholders like the Bédiers suffered significant economic losses; Joseph Bédier’s grandfather had in fact already sold his estate in Sainte-Suzanne in 1835.25 Bédier’s father Adolphe married Marie Céline Du Tertre Le Cocq in 1860, and left the island immediately to practice law in Paris, where Bédier was born in 1864.26 Four years later, Adolphe left his young wife a widow; in 1870 she moved her three children back to Réunion, where she soon married her cousin, the lawyer and politician Denis-Godefroy Du Tertre Le Cocq (often called Le Cocq Du Tertre).27 Thus began Bédier’s direct initiation into creole culture. Eleven years later, Bédier began his university studies in Paris, making one last trip back to the island in 1887. Despite the fact that Bédier spent most of his life on the continent, he remained “definitively and passionately creole” (as the Leblonds would say; they rightly affirm that to understand Bédier, one must understand Réunion).28 From his earliest days in

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Paris in 1881 to his last in 1938, he maintained continuous contact with his fellow creole migrants —and with his family and compatriots on the island. Throughout this career, he repeatedly recalled his creole heritage in public speeches, private communications, and published scholarship. For Bédier, creole medievalism was a way of life; after his death, it became a scholarly legacy, shaping French medieval studies in ways that have yet to be understood. Medieval Francophone Literature

Bédier achieved substantial public acclaim in 1900 when he published his immensely popular modernization of Tristan et Iseut. Three years later, he acceded to the chair of medieval French literature at France’s most prestigious research institution, the Collège de France. During World War I, he worked in the Ministry of War translating German documents whose publication made him a national hero. Bédier’s patriotic service, along with his proven literary talents, contributed to his subsequent election to France’s most revered cultural institution, the Académie Française (1920). When he died in 1938, his obituary appeared in nearly two hundred newspapers throughout the world. Bédier’s status as an acclaimed public figure made him an ideal target of Réunionnais efforts to enhance the island’s status in the empire. Most importantly, his reputation as a poet spoke directly to Réunionnais strategies that made literature an instrument of cultural politics. Almost since its first settlement, Réunion was popularly known as the “Island of Poets.”29 By the early twentieth century, it had produced a number of poets who enjoyed high status in the French literary canon, including Évariste de Parny (1753–1814), Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle (1818–94), and Léon Dierx (1838–1912). For Réunionnais, Bédier seemed like the most recent heir to this exalted tradition. As the Leblonds and others integrated Bédier into the canon of nationally recognized Réunionnais poets, medievalism came into direct contact with colonial literary politics. In the 1920s and 1930s, colonialist writers—including prolific Réunionnais—sought to define “colonial literature” as pro-imperial, arguing that literature alone could effectively promote colonialism as a popular national enterprise.30 These arguments directly resisted the increasing prominence of black African and Caribbean writers publishing in French. Bédier’s poetry, consisting of modernized romances and epics, extended the colonialist literary vision to the nation’s

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very foundation in the Middle Ages. His creole medievalism thus underwrites a nationalist literary genealogy that begins and ends with overseas expansion. The traditional group of creole poets, like Bédier, gained national reputations while drawing inspiration from colonial memory. Parny, for example, popularized an aesthetics of exilic mourning (Élégies, 1773) and lyrical lamentation for lost love (Poésies érotiques, 1778). He also authored one of the first examples of European “colonial literature,” Chansons madécasses (1787)—presented as translations of Malagasy songs and intended to inspire compassion for indigenous peoples (Parny’s preface blames France’s slave trade for creating intertribal warfare on Madagascar; he wrote eloquently against slavery).31 Most importantly for later Réunionnais cultural strategists, Parny gained sufficient national stature to join the Académie Française in 1803. Bédier, for his part, would have also known Parny as an ancestral cousin (married to a Bédier cousin, Grâce-Mary Vally).32 Leconte de Lisle was also elected to the Académie Française, in 1886. For him, Bourbon inspired affecting landscape descriptions, painful emotions of lost love, and a sensibility to Indian cultures. During his early years in France, he wrote several short stories sharply critical of colonial society along with nostalgic poems of homesick yearning.33 Although he soon signed a controversial creole petition supporting the abolition of slavery, he later defended French colonialism in India (and criticized Britain).34 After the Prussian seige of 1870, Leconte de Lisle affirmed his republican commitments with Le sacre de Paris, earning the appreciation of the Leblonds (who compared him to Victor Hugo) and of nationalist figures like Maurice Barrès (who also befriended Bédier).35 Leconte de Lisle is most widely known, however, as the leading representative of Parnassian poetry—an overtly classical conception that rejected both romanticism and medievalism in favor of “impartial” Greek models.36 Yet Leconte de Lisle built his Greece largely on the landscape of Bourbon.37 From this Eurocentric perspective, creole culture represents a prestigious fusion of “Aryan” influences (Greek, French, Indian). The multiplicities of this heritage enable metropolitan readers such as Baudelaire to conclude that Leconte de Lisle’s colonial origins were virtually undetectable in his poetry—and Réunionnais critics to discern insular influences throughout his writings.38 Dierx might have inherited Leconte de Lisle’s seat at the Académie Française, but he refused to present himself.39 Nonetheless, fifteen of his fellow Parisian poets voted him “Prince of the Poets” in 1898 (succeed-

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ing Stéphane Mallarmé); some on Réunion judged his poetry superior to both Leconte de Lisle and Hugo.40 Dierx developed a more sensual and nostalgic style than Leconte de Lisle, focused on the pains of creole exile, disappointed creole love, and impending death. His first collection, Aspirations (1858), drew on late romanticism, while his second, Poèmes et poésies (1864), dedicated to Leconte de Lisle, revealed his formal mastery of Parnassian ideals. Following several more acclaimed collections, Dierx edited his own œuvres complètes (1894–96) and published no more. When he retired in 1909, Réunion’s General Council (presided by Bédier’s stepfather Du Tertre) granted him an annual stipend.41 All three of these creole poets, like Bédier, expressed longing for their island home while living out their professional lives in Paris. During the Revolution, Parny waxed particularly nostalgic, and once sought a teaching post at the lycée.42 At the beginning of the Second Republic (1848), Leconte de Lisle also sought an appointment to teach in his newly “liberated” homeland; he considered running for election in 1882.43 On the whole, though, Leconte de Lisle has left an ambiguous record of insular attachment: while some praise him, others believe that he disliked creoles; he made no public mention of Réunion in his acceptance speech to the Académie, but in private he warmly thanked his compatriots for their congratulations; when he died in 1894, some island newspapers published laudatory obituaries, while others took the opportunity to doubt his loyalty.44 Dierx, by contrast, maintained consistently warm relations with Réunion. He thought of returning permanently in 1878, and during an 1892 visit declared himself more fortunate than Leconte de Lisle who could not return to the homeland they had both celebrated in verse.45 Building on these personal and artistic connections, Réunionnais writers in the latter decades of the Third Republic promoted this trio of creole poets as emblems of Réunion’s value to the nation. The Leblonds, most vocally, defended the prestige of creole identity to a largely indifferent national audience (“we are tired of being treated like poor cousins”) by recalling France’s literary debts to the colony.46 Ary, for example, claimed Parny for egalitarian ideals, dubbing him “Friend of the Blacks.”47 And Marius characterized Leconte de Lisle as the paragon of “creole genius” (a model also applied to Bédier).48 In 1909, the Leblonds initiated an effort to erect a monument to Leconte de Lisle in Saint-Denis.49 Two years later, they opened Réunion’s first art museum and named it after Dierx.50

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For the Leblonds and their sympathizers, the creole poets exemplified “colonial literature.” And they capitalized on Bédier’s international reputation to draft him into the group, establishing an enduring role for medieval studies in Réunionnais literary history.51 Just as Bédier used medieval poetry to enhance France’s prestige, the architects of his reputation as a creole poet used literature to enhance Réunion’s prestige. At the opening of the Musée Léon Dierx (1911), the Leblonds included Bédier among the island’s literary luminaries (“an honor to the French language”), alongside Leconte de Lisle and Dierx. Bédier’s election to the Académie Française in 1920 prompted Réunionnais to laud Bédier as the most recent addition to the island’s poetic pantheon.52 Major public displays soon followed — at the Exposition Coloniale in Marseille (1922) and the Exposition Réunionnaise in Saint-Denis (1925). Commemorative publications for both events placed Bédier firmly in the company of his poetic compatriots.53 More public displays and commemorative publications followed with the international expositions in Paris in 1931 and 1937 — all featuring Bédier alongside Parny, Leconte de Lisle, and Dierx.54 The major obituary published on Réunion in 1938 concludes with the exhortation to add Bédier to the “glorious” lineage of Leconte de Lisle and Dierx.55 The politics of colonial literature reached a pivotal point in 1921—the same year Bédier joined the Académie Française: one month after Bédier’s Académie acceptance speech (3 November 1921), René Maran won the Prix Goncourt (14 December 1921). Credited as the first black African Francophone novel, Maran’s Batouala: veritable roman nègre tells a story of oppressive corruption, prefaced by a mordant critique of the colonial administration. The award of the Goncourt caused both literary and colonial scandal.56 Procolonialist novelists set out to reclaim the genre of the “colonial novel” for Europeans. In direct reply to Maran, the Leblonds (who themselves had won the Goncourt ten years earlier) published Ulysse, cafre, ou l’histoire dorée d’un noir (1924), a fictional demonstration of the value of French colonialism voiced by a white creole narrator.57 Dedicating the novel to Raymond Poincaré (former president of the Republic) and prefacing it with an extract of Louis XIV’s Code Noir, the Leblonds cast themselves as France’s colonial spokesmen. They followed the novel with a programmatic statement on colonial literature, Après l’exotisme de Loti: le roman colonial (1926). Here, they asserted that only white creoles (and a few uncommonly imaginative Europeans) could produce a literature capable

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of inspiring compassion for indigenous peoples among metropolitans, and an appreciation for “universal” French values among the colonized; other writers (like Pierre Loti) produced “mere exoticism.”58 Beyond their publications, the Leblonds organized a colonial writers group (1926) and hosted a number of events at the Exposition Coloniale (1931).59 Indeed, from their earliest writings, the Leblonds aimed to teach metropolitan audiences the “truth” about French colonialism.60 In all of their efforts, they sought to reclaim colonial literature from the emerging corpus of fiction produced by writers of color—beginning with Maran, but including the future artisans of négritude (Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, Léopold Senghor). Bédier’s creole medievalism frames the literary controversy of 1921. Earlier in the year, he began publishing a cultural review, La revue de France.61 The first issue in March featured both colonial and medieval literature: the editors promised the serial publication of a novel by Jean D’Esme (Les dieux rouges) as well as Bédier’s Perceval ou le Saint-Graal (which never in fact appeared). Bédier’s first publications did include an article on the oldest romances and extracts of his translation of Roland; the full edition, dedicated to “Bourbon Island,” came out a year later.62 Throughout the 1920s, the editorial content and advertising in La revue de France offered a consistent mix of colonial and medieval literature.63 In other words, at the same time that the Leblonds inserted Bédier into their literary politics, Bédier himself directly supported colonialist writers —and invited the readers of his review to connect these writers to France’s most ancient literary traditions (Pierre Mille, a popular colonial writer, cited Bédier’s critique of Chateaubriand’s 1827 account of his trip to the Americas as proof of the failures of “exotic” travel literature).64 Without explicitly saying so, Bédier enacted the ideological tenets of the Leblonds’ program for a pro-imperial colonial literature. Indeed, at a celebration for Ulysse, cafre attended by Bédier, the Leblonds thanked him at length for his support.65 With direct and indirect support from Bédier, the Eurocentric canon of colonial literature came to include an explicitly colonial medievalism. Early on, the Leblonds found the origins of authentic exoticism in the Crusades (1906).66 Bédier, not coincidentally, praised the Crusades as France’s first colonial venture.67 Anthologies published to consolidate and market the achievements of the colonialist writers often begin with medieval texts that celebrate Christian expansionism. Three anthologies published by Roland Lebel (a metropolitan professor working in Morocco) exemplify this conception: he selects almost exclusively European writers to define

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“African literature” (1927), he refers to both Roland and Bédier’s scholarship (1931), and he includes French medieval chroniclers Guillaume de Tyr and Joinville among his examples of “great colonial literature” (1952).68 A similar anthology published in 1942 begins with Foucher de Chartres and Guillaume de Tyr, with the explicit goal of fortifying the defeated French with examples of their triumphant colonial heritage.69 These kinds of anthologies make the Middle Ages the origin of French colonial culture. Appropriations of Bédier’s own writings embed medievalism within the canonization of creole poetry as a form of colonial literature. At the centennial commemoration of Bédier’s birth (1964), Hippolyte Foucque identified him and Leconte de Lisle as the greatest contributors to the island’s literary reputation.70 The week before, celebrants of the first Grand Prix Littéraire de La Réunion (attributed to Jean Albany, one of the “fathers” of créolie) invoked Parny, Leconte de Lisle, Dierx, and Bédier as models for the future of Réunionnais poetry.71 A few years later, when Foucque published an anthology of Réunionnais poetry, he again included Bédier in the canonical pantheon.72 Even more telling, an anthology of Indian Ocean poetry published in Madagascar included extracts of Bédier’s Tristan et Iseut—integrating medieval literature into the genealogy of Francophone literature.73 Even now, Réunionnais remember Bédier as a creole poet. The nonagenarian Paul Champdemerle reminisced in 1996 about hearing Bédier speak in the 1930s: “Joseph Bédier could read three lectures . . . in absolute silence. You could have heard a fly buzzing. Because he wrote in verse, in a magnificent language. It was unforgettable.”74 Champdemerle’s memory pays tribute to a still famous compatriot, reactivating Bédier’s poetic reputation for a new generation of readers. The instrumental role given to literature in colonial cultural politics has made it equally important to neocolonial and postcolonial arguments since the 1950s. Bédier, the Middle Ages, and the traditional creole poets repeatedly attract attention as writers and politicians imagine ways to represent Réunionnais identity. Appropriations have been politically varied, supporting both the far left and the far right. Two moments in Leconte de Lisle’s commemorative history are particularly instructive. In 1977, enterprising admirers (including Champdemerle) arranged for the transfer of Leconte de Lisle’s remains from Paris to Saint-Paul (his birthplace).75 On the one hand, the reburial ceremony signaled Réunion’s profound attachment to France. Organized by conservative “integrationists” who favored neocolonial policies, it prompted a public commemoration

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at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (presided by France’s Réunionnais Prime Minister, Raymond Barre).76 The heir who authorized the transfer reserved the right to demand the remains’ return after ten years, for fear that Réunion would soon become independent from France.77 On the other hand, speeches at the ceremony characterized Leconte de Lisle as a social activist who fought against slavery and defended the impoverished; the socialist leader François Mitterand took the occasion to claim Leconte de Lisle as a “poet of the worker”; official and popular celebrations alike featured maloya, a form of music and dancing aligned with Réunion’s autonomist movement.78 More recently, the 1994 centenary of Leconte de Lisle’s death engendered equally contradictory reactions: commentators across the political spectrum praised the various commemorations; the Leblonds’ biography was reprinted, putting stridently colonialist interpretations back into circulation; the progressive artist Sham’s (pseudonym of the actor Chamsiddine Bénali) followed in the footsteps of the ultraconservative Henri Cornu in proposing a Musée Leconte de Lisle (Sham’s hoped to promote a collective sense of Réunionnité, while Cornu considered “the Réunionnais people” an impossible idea).79 These claims on Leconte de Lisle’s legacy testify to the enduring, and divergent, force of literary history in the politics of Réunionnais identity. Another active venue of literary politics has been the translation of the canonical poets into the Creole language. Parny’s Chansons madécasses, for example, appeared in 2005 accompanied by translations into kréol rényoné. This project directly counters the “integrationist” commemoration of Parny in the 1960s, which made him a republican patriot in the nationalist vein.80 Instead, the translators, Axel and Robert Gauvin, cast Parny as the founder of a long line of poets who have defended the island’s freedoms: “the author shows himself respectful of the culture of the other and, the first, opens the path to a line of Réunionnais writers, from Leconte de Lisle to Gamaleya, who have been the bards of Liberty.”81 The Gauvains here integrate both Parny and Leconte de Lisle into a liberationist literary history by associating him with Boris Gamaleya (b. 1930)—a former communist activist, exiled to Paris in 1960 for supporting Réunion’s autonomy from France, author in the 1970s of a number of essays on Creole, and currently considered one of Réunion’s greatest living poets.82 His Vali pour une reine morte (1973) occupies for Réunion a place similar to Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal for Martinique. Gamaleya actually took

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decisive inspiration from Leconte de Lisle early in life, and later studied Parny (who he claimed as a communist predecessor).83 Parny, Leconte de Lisle, and Gamaleya thus all appear here as participants in a distinctly Réunionnais multicultural aesthetic with a long and venerable history. For the Gauvins, this aesthetic also includes Bédier: a few years before translating Chansons madécasses, Axel Gauvin published an extract of Bédier’s Tristan et Iseut translated into kréol rényoné, alongside other translations from Parny and contemporary poetry composed directly in Creole.84 Creolophone activists thus continue the legacy of literary politics initiated by the Leblonds to opposite effect: Gauvin wrests Parny from pure Francocentrism and dislodges Bédier from earlier imperialist appropriations. Tristan et Iseut in Creole seals the evolution of “medieval Francophone literature” from colonial to postcolonial concept. This confluence of medieval and modern poetry in Réunion’s literary history places Bédier firmly within the literary genealogy of Francophone studies. Routed through Réunion, medieval and modern literary histories both reach far beyond their respective temporal boundaries. Imperial Cultures

The creole medievalism articulated by the Réunionnais migrant (cited earlier) has a long history, one that arguably lies at the very basis of the notion of the mission civilisatrice that drove French colonial ideology for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.85 If newly colonized peoples were irremediably different from Europeans, “assimilating” them into French culture would be a senseless project. If, however, “savages” merely lived in a time lag, they could develop toward French defined civilization. Like medieval Europeans, they could “evolve” into “modern” peoples. Some French anthropologists even set out to prove morphological similarities between contemporary Africans and medieval Europeans (to the detriment of both groups).86 This attitude owes much to the legacies of romantic historiography, which approached the primitive “other” as a living embodiment of Europe’s childhood.87 These intertwinings of medievalism and colonialism form the broader context of Bédier’s creole medievalism. This book begins, then, with an exploration of interactions between medievalism and colonialism during the Third Republic, with a particular focus on Réunion’s relations with metropolitan France. Chapter 1,

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“Roncevaux and Réunion,” addresses how distant times and distant places together bolstered the discourse of national identity. As republicans distanced themselves from the radical legacies of the Revolution, the Middle Ages (previously shunned as unredeemably royalist) offered a new source of republican legitimacy. Simultaneously, colonialism became instrumental in reestablishing France’s reputation for military prowess. The defeat of 1870 reconfigured France’s relation to colonialism on several levels: the Prussian annexation of Alsace and parts of Lorraine made France itself a victim of colonizing aggression; other provinces became targets of aggressive centralizing policies; France’s ability to colonize new overseas territories counteracted the emotional effects of the continental losses; the integration of colonial representatives in the newly formed parliament gave distant territories a central place in the nation. The recovery of Alsace-Lorraine and the pursuit of new overseas colonies remained entangled over the following decades—and Réunionnais promoted both. One of Réunion’s longest serving deputies, François-Césaire De Mahy, saw colonial expansion (especially in Madagascar) as key to strengthening the young Republic and recovering from the losses of the Franco-Prussian war. Later, Bédier and his two sons all served eagerly in the war of 1914– 18 that brought France’s “lost provinces” back into the national fold. De Mahy, not incidentally, was a cousin of Bédier’s parents and greatly influenced his early years in the metropole. The Prussian victory in 1870 also prompted efforts to strengthen France’s institutions (from the army to the university), whose “weaknesses” many blamed for the defeat. Those responsible for reforming the education system included a number of influential medieval historians who gave the Middle Ages new prominence in the pedagogy of national identity. They sought to create a patriotic republican citizenry by providing lessons in the nation’s ancient prestige at every level of the curriculum. In literature, these lessons focused on Roland, whose epic battle at Roncevaux illustrated French grandeur and so promised to renew French patriotism for the future. At the same time, scholars and popular writers from across the political spectrum drew on negative images of a “barbaric” Middle Ages to denigrate both Germany and “uncivilized” overseas cultures. During Bédier’s lifetime, then, republican culture sustained a dualistic approach to the Middle Ages, a dualism that conditioned both the formation and reception of his creole medievalism.

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On the popular level, medievalism and colonialism came together monumentally each time France put itself on display for the expositions universelles, or World Fairs, hosted in Paris. Chapter 2, “Medieval and Colonial Attractions,” analyzes the public performance of national and imperial identities. Through reconstructions of medieval and colonial buildings, organizers encouraged millions of visitors to draw parallels between distant times and distant places.88 They grounded national identity in the prestige of both medievalism and colonialism, enlisting both in the service of a triumphant modernity. The exhibits from Réunion, for their part, vividly crystallized creoles’ dreams of imperial prominence. To this end, the island’s pavilions in the 1920s and 1930s showcased Bédier’s scholarly publications, turning the famous medievalist into an icon of both colonial achievement and the nation’s most cherished ideals. The roles of Réunionnais in the expositions and in republican politics suggest some of the particularities of Bédier’s own formation as a “creole.” I thus turn in chapter 3, “Between Paris and Saint-Denis,” to Bédier’s personal history — political affiliations, inherited creole culture, and explicit statements of creole identification. Politically, Bédier maintained seemingly incongruous affinities, from the socialist ( Jean Jaurès, Léon Blum) to the reactionary (Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras). Bédier’s contradictory political engagements derive from the fissures of creole subjectivity, themselves shaped by the contradictions of medievalism. On the one hand, Réunionnais elites embraced an idealized notion of chivalry that they translated into a mythology of racial purity. On the other, they resisted metropolitan efforts to compare the colony to “primitive” French provinces or other colonies “stuck” in medieval time. The same duality characterizes Bédier’s personal relationship to creole identity. As he engages colonial memory in letters, speeches, and other autobiographical statements, he portrays the island as a source of both loss and fulfillment, exile and belonging. Together, these biographical details establish Bédier as a representative “creole” as well as a unique “medievalist.” Through the practice of medieval studies, he addresses his own fractured desires for national belonging. Having inherited a certain medievalism from creole society, Bédier elaborated a scholarly version that made colonial experience the source of a national literary history. Chapter 4, “Island Philology,” analyzes how Bédier turns to memories of “Bourbon” in each of his most influential and

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popular publications: his dissertation Les Fabliaux (1893), his rewriting of Tristan et Iseut (1900), his study of the epic tradition in Les légendes épiques (1908–13), and his edition and translation of Roland (1922). Bédier published multiple editions of each of these works, indicating his persistent and overlapping interests (four editions for the Fabliaux, four for Tristan et Iseut, three for the Légendes épiques, six for Roland). Arguably, Bédier worked intermittently on all four of these major works from the beginning to the end of his career (between 1921 and 1925, all four appeared in either new editions or reprintings). In each of these works, Bédier constructs medieval French literature as a purely national tradition, minimizing and even negating outside influences (be they Indian, Celtic, or Germanic). Paradoxically, Bédier fortifies this vision of cultural homogeneity through colonial memory. In the Fabliaux and the Légendes épiques, for example, he supports his “scientific” arguments with anecdotes that derive from Réunion. Meanwhile, he dedicates Tristan et Iseut to his stepfather Du Tertre and Roland to the island itself. Bédier’s idea of literary history thus originates as much from colonial experience as from historical study. Each of these four publications reveals the creole in the medieval —just as Bédier’s biography reveals the medieval in the creole. These formative and often forgotten interactions shape a creole genealogy for medieval French studies whose effects reach far beyond Bédier himself. Creole medievalism concerns almost the entirety of Bédier’s scholarship, but it affects the Roland most deeply. I therefore pursue in chapter 5, “A Creole Epic,” an analysis of Bédier’s relations with the Roland—both what he claimed about the poem and what he denied. The poem recounts the story of Charlemagne’s efforts to convert the “pagans” of Spain and to keep peace among his own men. As this drama develops, the poem establishes numerous dichotomies between the “righteous Christians” and the “immoral Pagans.” These portrayals of absolute difference inspired the nationalist appropriations for which the poem is famous. For Bédier, they ratified his commitments to a purified history of France. Indeed, in his translation, Bédier bolsters the poem’s anti-Pagan judgments and minimizes ambiguity whenever possible. The Roland, however, also portrays the Pagans and the Christians as remarkably similar (in their dress, chivalric values, etc.). In fact, the poem is saturated with suggestions of shared histories—and not only because a Christian view dominates the representation of the Pagans. I argue specifically that materials used by both Franks and Saracens (such

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as silk, fur, and ivory) reveal traces of disavowed histories of exchange and shared culture. This thematic dualism—in which the foreign is both rejected and desired, presented as both different and the same—speaks directly to the dualistic nature of creole relations with France. The poem can actually support many different visions of national history. The fact that this diversity has rarely surfaced testifies to the persuasive force of the interpretive tradition that Bédier helped solidify. Today on Réunion, like elsewhere in France, young people still study the Roland in school. And it still serves primarily to illustrate the continental nation’s heroic origins. The poem’s rigorous dichotomies speak perhaps too well to contemporary xenophobias. Traces of cross-cultural interaction, however, offer some possibilities for a postcolonial pedagogy of medieval literature. These two interpretive tendencies support opposite political stances. They exemplify, once again, the internal tensions of medievalism in general and of creole medievalism in particular. And so, having begun with the founding imprint of medievalism on Réunion in the seventeenth century, I explore in chapter 6, “Postcolonial Itineraries,” creole medievalism’s continuing development in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since Bédier’s death, creole medievalism has included engagements with both the Middle Ages and Bédier himself. Bédier’s prestige as a Réunionnais who succeeded at the highest echelons of the national culture has made him attractive to partisans of nearly every political persuasion. The Middle Ages have an equally varied valence: the fact that Réunion was settled in modern times makes the Middle Ages both a justifying precursor to modern expansionism and innocent of colonialism’s direct legacies. Bédier and the Middle Ages thus console metropolitan ambitions of centralized control while also fostering postcolonial dreams. Creole medievalism has appeared in a number of ways on Réunion since departmentalization in 1946 — street names, historical commemorations, Creole language politics, and artistic installations. Each of these manifestations refers either to Bédier or the Middle Ages as symbols of the essence of either “France” or “Réunion.” These postcolonial elaborations of historical memory reenact the long-standing intimacies of colonialism and medievalism. Creole Medievalism connects medieval literature to modern political history and contemporary culture. It illustrates the many mutual entanglements of philology, colonialism, and nationalism in the French empire

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since 1870. Both France and the Middle Ages look rather different from the perspective of Réunion and Bédier’s biography. By making literature central to imperial identity, Bédier’s Middle Ages aestheticized cultural politics. They did not, however, silence other histories. Through the configurations of creole medievalism (in all of its contradictory senses), the geographies and temporalities of “France” refract into multiple unresolved perspectives that defy the notion of a “general” national history.

· CHAPTER 1 ·

Roncevaux and Réunion

A

ssertions of ancient origins have long served to legitimize kingdoms, nations, and other collectivities. Such assertions support desires for seamless historical continuity and homogeneous culture. In Europe, prior to the nineteenth century, ancient Rome served as the most frequent reference point for claims of cultural prestige. In the course of the nineteenth century, however, European countries increasingly mapped their national identities onto medieval history. The Middle Ages offered the ideological advantage of ethnic groupings that could be easily conflated with contemporary nations, and thus sustain claims of relative superiority.1 As the Middle Ages became a concentrated locus of nationalist thinking, the academic study of medieval literature and history took on a poignantly political tinge. When scholars debated the nature of medieval societies, they also engaged the terms of contemporary national rivalries. And the territorial ambitions of the major European powers made these rivalries far more than academic. The nationalist politics that often underwrote nineteenth-century scholarship have been well established. For French medieval studies, many critics have addressed the ways in which conflicts with Germany shaped scholarly interests and conclusions.2 Few studies, however, have accounted for the imperial designs of the European powers. As France pursued new territorial conquests after 1880, overseas ambitions brought new dimensions to established European tensions, especially those with Germany. The expansion of the French empire also brought new pressures on Réunion’s relations with the metropole. As Réunionnais politicians embraced the imperial agenda, they saw their own influence over colonial affairs dwindle. In comparison to recent conquests in Africa and Asia, the small island offered few economic or strategic advantages. In this chapter, I analyze the interdependence of medievalism and colonialism in republican discourse between 1870 and 1940, with particular attention to Réunion. From the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to the conquest · 1 ·

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of Madagascar to the hostilities that culminated in the war of 1914–18, colonialism reconfigured national relations to both history and overseas identities. In the process, the medieval genre of the epic came to signify both the ancient origins of national prestige and the glories of expansionism. Medievalist scholars, including Bédier, participated actively in the promulgation of a colonial medievalism that served republican nationalism. Colonialist metaphors underwrote the depiction of France’s Middle Ages as a cultured precedent to modern domination overseas—and the epic as the apotheosis of patriotic devotion. This same academic discourse wielded the French Middle Ages against Germany, deploying metaphors of “primitivism” to delegitimize the recent victors. Historians and other commentators forged a number of links among the Middle Ages, Germany, and overseas cultures —all cast as “uncivilized.” The conjunction of medievalism and colonialism thus enabled France to appear powerful and modern (despite its recent defeat), while imposing “barbarism” on its rivals and subjects. Republican medievalism and colonialism illustrate clearly the double valence of both terms, invested alternately and simultaneously with “positive” and “negative” values. Ultimately, I argue that what Raoul Girardet so influentially called France’s idée coloniale included an instrumental idée médiévale— and vice versa. Colonial Nation

The Middle Ages provided France with images of national value well before 1870.3 The Prussian victory, however, reconfigured history’s place in nationalist thinking. Indeed, Pierre Nora has suggested that 1870 rehabilitated historical study, shifting the nation’s defining edge from the Revolution (an internal, temporal division) to the border with Germany (an external, geographic division).4 The events of 1870, in other words, shifted ideological attention simultaneously toward the Middle Ages and Germany. Stated more strongly, the geographic conquest of modern France opened a place for the royalist Middle Ages to serve the prestige of a republican nation. The precarious nature of the government immediately after 1870, where royalists held the majority in the hastily configured parliament, contributed further to the emergence of a republican medievalism. Republicans defended themselves from royalist pressures by eschewing Revolutionary radicalism, and claiming the Middle Ages as their own source of legitimacy. As a result, republican nationalism became both medievalist and

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3

colonialist: “If French nationalism was republican rather than monarchical, it was a republic without revolution, based on militarism and heroic sacrifice, which harked back to former royal glories and emphasized race.”5 While republican royalism evokes the Middle Ages, republican racialism sustained colonialism (itself partly grounded in medieval precedents). Conversely, and simultaneously, medievalism figured in French national discourse as a sign of illegitimacy. Again, this form of medievalism was not invented around 1870, but it gained new poignancy as leaders of the Third Republic sought to consolidate national identity. The Prussians’ “medievalness” was said to undermine their military superiority: commentators compared them to fifth-century Germanic “barbarians” (implying that their culture had not changed in fourteen centuries).6 Later, French critics of Bismarck cast his colonial ambitions as a further sign of Germany’s “medieval” character.7 During the war of 1914–18, Bédier himself characterized Attila the Hun as a model of civilized honor far surpassing modern Germans.8 Within France, negative medievalism helped to define national values. Some blamed the 1870 defeat on weaknesses caused by France’s “medieval” Catholicism.9 Radical republicanism could also appear negatively medieval: during the Commune of 1871 (when revolutionary-minded workers occupied Paris), Gustave Flaubert accused the communards of having “medieval ideas,” and Paul de Saint-Victor compared them to medieval Italian despots.10 Rural Frenchmen seemed to pose a similarly “medieval” impediment to national cohesion: Léon Gambetta, in his capacity as Minister of the Interior, referred to peasants as “several centuries behind the enlightened part of the country.”11 All of these metaphors, whether addressed to France or to Germany, use the Middle Ages to define the boundaries of modern French superiority. Republican medievalism thus secured national identity from internal and external challenges. The events of 1870 also reconfigured France’s relation to colonialism, with particularly dramatic effects for Réunion. Politically, Réunion (along with the other “old colonies”) gained new access to national influence when the provisional postimperial government included colonial representatives as full members of the National Assembly.12 Colonial representation remained contested in the following years, even after the ratification of a new constitution in 1875. The Réunionnais deputy, Bédier’s cousin François-Césaire De Mahy, vigorously defended the colonies’ place in the national government, while also defending the republic against the royalists.13 He argued persuasively for the restoration of colonial representation

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when the Assembly voted to end it (November 1875); when other deputies again challenged the colonies in 1877, De Mahy reminded them that without the colonies “the Republic would not have been created.”14 Indeed, from the Réunionnais perspective, De Mahy himself had made the Republic: when the constitution using the word “republic” passed in 1875 by one vote, Réunionnais claimed that he had single-handedly safeguarded the nation.15 In the founding days of the Third Republic, Réunionnais claimed for themselves a central place in the republican imaginary—a place rarely recognized by the broader republican culture. In more abstract terms, the loss of Alsace-Lorraine transformed the place of colonial subjectivity in French national identity. It now belonged “within” the nation rather than only “outside”—and it belonged to everyone. For the “wound” of continental colonization affected the whole nation, not just the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine. For those dedicated to revanche, or the recovery of the lost territories, including Réunionnais, the “decolonization” of France was a shared project of national reunification. For Réunionnais creoles, the integration of colonial subjectivity within national identity made their own relationship to France exemplary, rather than exceptional. If displaced Alsatians maintained what Jean-Marie Mayeur has called a “mémoire frontière” [border-memory]—an unwavering commitment to their “petite patrie” (Alsace) fused with unrivaled devotion to the “grande patrie” (France) — migrant creoles related to Réunion and France in the same way. Displaced inhabitants from both regions characterized themselves as exiles. Alsace, moreover, proved that a relatively “recent colony” (forcibly annexed by the French monarchy during the seventeenth century, like Réunion) could become fully French.16 Revealingly, when an Alsatian addressed Réunionnais graduates in 1923, he underscored parallels between the two “provinces,” both of which were “ransomed” in unwanted wars without ever wavering in their ardent love for France.17 In the longer course of the Third Republic, this kind of dual commitment to regional and national identity became a desirable model of national belonging for all citizens (especially in the influential writings of the Lorrain Maurice Barrès).18 In the wake of 1870, creole nationalism and republican nationalism converged to a substantial degree. The consolidation of the French nation also proceeded along colonialist lines during the Third Republic, again with repercussions for Réunionnais’ identity. Eugen Weber has shown how slowly the French government

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implemented measures to unify the national culture, and how much it drew on colonialist models. Once one ventured out of Paris, the feeling went, one found only savages: the rural provinces were populated by Redskins, like in America; the Landes resembled the African Sahara; some provincials wished only to be treated as well as the colonies; Bretons and Asians looked equally “foreign.”19 The Musée d’Ethnographie institutionalized the discursive association between the provinces and the colonies by including a “Salle de France” alongside its colonial exhibits.20 Colonialist views of the provinces remained current well into the twentieth century (Bédier once compared French peasants to the “sauvages” of Australia).21 Even the newly repatriated Alsace succumbed to colonial logic in 1919, as the Minister of War noted that many officers thought that they could conduct themselves there “as if they were in the Congo.”22 As late as the 1930s, the edges of Paris seemed in need of civilizing conquest.23 On Réunion, the colonialist approach to the continental provinces helped articulate Réunion’s own difference from newer colonies: by associating French peasants with Africans and Asians, Réunionnais drew themselves closer to the center of the nation.24 Colonialism entered the heart of French national identity most literally through the government’s pursuit of new overseas conquests in the 1880s and 1890s. Leaders, such as Gambetta and Jules Ferry, received substantial support from the colonial deputies themselves, as well as from others who saw economic advantages to imperialism. These loosely affiliated members of the parti colonial promoted imperialism as an expression of patriotism, despite their often-conflicting political and geographic interests.25 Colonial successes contributed to an emerging sense of national healing, seeming to compensate for the losses of 1870. Paul Morand articulated this sentiment succinctly in 1931: Haven’t the colonies always consoled us, we French, from our reversals? It’s after the sad end of the reign of Louis XIV that the Regency develops the charter companies; after Waterloo, our comfort is Algeria; after 1871, our real revenge (Germany understood this) was Indochina and Tchad.26 By proving its prowess overseas, France “de-colonized” the national imaginary at home. Republican colonialism, tied to revanche, thus remained current—if contested— well into the twentieth century.27

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No one supported colonial expansion as an expression of national identity more vocally and consistently than the Réunionnais deputies. De Mahy aligned himself early on with Gambetta: he did not support the treaty that ceded Alsace-Lorraine to Germany, and he promoted colonialism as compatible with a strong stance against Germany.28 De Mahy participated actively in a number of procolonial organizations (from the Comité Dupleix to the Société Africaine de France), which sought repeatedly to expand colonial representation in parliament, and popularized colonialism in the political press.29 His fellow deputy Louis Brunet (elected in 1893) shared De Mahy’s views (including his antiprotestantism).30 Both politicians fashioned themselves as leaders of a “colonizing colony,” making creole identity a mirror of national identity, Réunion France’s diminutive double.31 Through colonialism, they sought to ensure Réunionnais’ status as civilized, national subjects (neither provincial nor colonial savages) — worthy of becoming citizens of a département.32 De Mahy and Brunet lobbied specifically for the conquest of Madagascar (“a tropical Normandy”).33 Both authored books favoring conquest, continuing the arguments made by Bédier’s great-uncle Philippe-Achille Bédier (as governor in the 1830s, he prepared an influential report on how Madagascar was more important to France than Algeria).34 In the Réunionnais’ view, the larger island would become Réunion’s political dependent, as well as the solution to its economic problems. According to De Mahy, France could eradicate excessive protestant influence on Madagascar while providing a new destination for displaced Alsatians.35 In 1883, De Mahy personally launched an expedition to Madagascar during his three weeks as Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies. France took possession in 1896 (the exiled queen resided on Réunion before settling in Algeria).36 From the perspective of what Jean Ganiage has called “Réunionnais imperialism,” De Mahy and Brunet “forced” the metropolitan government to undertake the conquest of Madagascar.37 Madagascar represents the most visible success of the Réunionnais imperial agenda. For even though De Mahy was active in the parti colonial and held numerous important governmental posts throughout his career, he achieved few other material successes.38 And even Madagascar ultimately failed Réunionnais expectations: metropolitan investors turned away from Réunion in favor of Madagascar, the farms of Réunionnais migrants failed, Madagascar received government subsidies that Réunion did not,

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and Réunion became Madagascar’s administrative dependent, rather than vice versa.39 Bédier himself lamented Réunion’s vexed relations with both Madagascar and Paris, commenting that creoles deserved greater recognition from the metropole “in memory of all that Bourbon has done on Madagascar, for Madagascar. Madagascar, now an ungrateful country.”40 Indeed, the whole colonialist agenda, meant to provide a secure place for Réunion within the empire, actually exacerbated its marginalization as the government reduced its funding in order to pay for expeditions in Africa.41 One of the most influential procolonialist books of the period, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu’s De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes, refers disdainfully to smaller colonies like Réunion as “microscopic,” “stingy vestiges” of France’s previous imperial ambitions.42 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, advocates for Réunion continued to call for greater recognition of their island’s contributions and needs, but with little success as government priorities focused on the vast natural resources of Africa and Asia. Thus, while Réunionnais adopted colonial nationalism as their own, this strategy ironically contributed to the island’s marginalization. The overseas projects championed by De Mahy and other colonialists brought France back into direct conflict with Germany, whose own national interests motivated colonial ambitions from the 1870s all the way to 1940.43 Especially after 1885, French rivalry with Germany had as much to do with Africa as with Alsace-Lorraine.44 In Morocco, for example, protracted tensions developed after 1900 and contributed to the declaration of war in 1914. When France signed the Entente Cordiale with Britain in 1904, commercial interests in Morocco seemed settled to Germany’s detriment. For a number of reasons, the effort to reopen negotiations with France culminated in a visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II to Tangiers in 1905, where he reportedly declared support for Moroccan independence. The ensuing diplomatic crisis led to new international agreements over Moroccan trade, slowing France’s plans for annexation while leaving Germany in a weakened position.45 Ongoing failures to resolve competing financial interests led to a new crisis in 1911, when Germany anchored a small ship off Agadir in reaction to France’s mobilization of troops in the interior. The resulting treaty opened the way for the French annexation of Morocco, but at the cost of major territorial concessions in the Congo—leaving both sides dissatisfied.46 In France, the Agadir crisis renewed agitation for the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine and revitalized the literature of revanche.47 Indeed,

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during the Agadir confrontation, French criticism of German initiatives to complete the legal integration of the “stolen” continental provinces strengthened. Subsequent German efforts to outlaw “pro-French” cultural organizations in Alsace further inflamed French nationalist passions.48 Bédier’s own reaction to Agadir reflects this general rise in militantism: tracing German wrongs back to 1792, he concludes that France should have taken a stronger position and moved toward war (citizens, if not the government, were ready to demonstrate “our warrior heredity”); he himself made preparations to leave for battle (and in fact enlisted, at age 50, as soon as France declared war in 1914).49 French commentators regularly expressed their concerns about Germany in colonial terms. The category of the “primitive” made colonialist metaphors the logical companions to delegitimizing medieval metaphors: Germany, “the India of Europe,” needed civilizing;50 it represented a “childlike, colonized” culture of the sort that France, a “mature” civilization, had long transcended. After 1870, the victors’ putative primitiveness thus attracted the label of “Mohican” as well as “barbarian.”51 Even before 1870, “outre-Rhin” and “outre-mer” could be invoked as parallel indicators of the uncivilized—both contrary to essential “Frenchness.”52 The layering of colonialist tropes appears vividly in a 1915 image by Lucien Jonas depicting a Sénégalais soldier guarding German prisoners: he asks a family of French peasants (“paysans”) if they have come to see the “sauvages” (Figure 1). This caption deftly “colonizes” German identity while enabling both Africans and French peasants to identify with French civilization. On Réunion, a similar rhetoric bolstered white creole identifications with France, as politicians accused their darker-skinned rivals of “germanophilie.”53 The German threat to France itself was also seen as colonial. In 1908, the fervent nationalist Paul Déroulède declared that the price of peace with Germany would be the colonization of continental France (“a Germanic colony, carved up and indentured”); the French people would become German colonial subjects (“Dahomeans or Tonkinese of the white race”).54 Bédier reportedly expressed the same fear of German colonization in the years before the war.55 Although he resisted aggressive nationalism in the early 1900s, beginning in 1908 he echoed Déroulède in his desire for war and confidence in victory.56 In Bédier’s view, the price of peace would be the regrettable end of French colonialism: the Congo represented only the first concession and would not appease German aggression.57 For Bédier and other Réunionnais, German colonialism posed

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Figure 1. “ ‘Ti viens voir sauvages?’ ” [You come see savages?], L’Illustration, 2 January 1915.

an additional threat: Kaiser Wilhelm apparently planned to assert German control over both Réunion and Madagascar.58 Indeed, colonialists in Germany had Réunion on their territorial wish list all the way back in 1870, and identified Réunion as a strategic objective again in 1940.59 After the war of 1914–18, the Leblonds recalled the German threat with wistful irony,

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remarking that if Germany had taken over, tourism on the island would be better organized and the economy much improved.60 Réunion’s own participation in the war illustrates its fraught relations with the metropole. Like other colonies, Réunion contributed troops. Bédier himself served eagerly (as nurse, propagandist, and mayor of his Paris neighborhood), as did his stepfather on the island.61 In general, the government lauded colonial soldiers’ bravery and patriotism. Some argued that the colonies’ successful participation proved that they should receive greater national support. Réunionnais commentators specifically cited creole service in the war to illustrate the island’s equality with the metropole, and to promote greater political assimilation.62 They gave medievalism an instrumental value as they lauded the nationally recognized heroism of their fortuitously named compatriot, the aviator Roland Garros: “Roland! a name of glorious destiny, who founded, raised, fortified his remarkable lineage in the trenches of the Middle Ages, at Roncevaux, in order to enlighten our twentieth century with a powerful ray of ‘aerial glory.’ ”63 And yet, in practice, the “multi-colored” Réunionnais troops were often harassed by “French” soldiers and popularly considered inferior.64 The war’s conclusion, moreover, brought greater resources to African colonies, but not to Réunion. Throughout the Third Republic, overlapping and mutually reinforcing discourses of medievalism and colonialism shaped many expressions of national identity. In metaphoric slippages from the “savage” (autochthonous avatar of ancientness) to the “barbarian” (uncivilized Germanic foreigner from the early Middle Ages) to the “redskin” (prototypical figure of indigenous primitivism), distant times and distant places converged to delegitimize German culture. Similar slippages melded contemporary colonialism to the Crusades, in this case conferring prestige. Maréchal Lyautey (renowned for “pacifying” Madagascar and Morocco) embodied this chivalric notion of colonialism as the valiant extension of France’s oldest and noblest values.65 These contradictions complicated Réunionnais efforts to create a stable place for themselves in the Republic, for while they sought to claim the positive side of medievalism and colonialism, metropolitan attitudes often attributed to them the negative side. This tension, which traverses republican discourse, grants Bédier’s creole medievalism far-reaching national significance. As he identified French prestige with medieval expansionism, he gave the ideals of the Third Republic an

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ancient lineage. At the same time, he realized the dreams of elite Réunionnais for national recognition. Epic Nation

After the invasion of 1870, public leaders sought to strengthen France’s competitiveness, partly by reforming the education system. Some blamed an outdated curriculum for battlefield failures, and the new methods were designed to promote both critical thinking and patriotism. Consistent with the emergence of republican medievalism, pedagogical reforms included medieval literature and history—and consistent with the emergence of republican colonialism, medievalists conceived of national history in imperial terms. They sought, specifically, to counteract the perceived superiority of both German philology and German nationalism. While the French had treated the Middle Ages as a source of pleasant diversion, the Germans had honed a critical discipline worthy of the valued name of “science.” By 1870, German analytic methods were far more sophisticated than French approaches, and German scholars paid much more attention to medieval texts, including French ones (French critics expressed relief whenever a Frenchman managed to publish the first edition of a French text). In order to strengthen French education, Gabriel Monod and Ernest Lavisse introduced methods of German philology.66 To disseminate this new scholarship, Gaston Paris and Paul Meyer founded the journal Romania and rearticulated the goals of La Revue critique in patriotic terms.67 Patriotic scholarship privileged epic literature, because epics were understood to represent the origins of the ethnic groups that legitimated the modern nation-states.68 The politics of Roman prestige had long established the Aeneid as the model of significant literary achievement. As attention shifted toward medieval sources, the epic remained the privileged genre of national accomplishment. By this measure, France had appeared shamefully lacking prior to the mid-nineteenth century: it had nothing to rival the Nibelungenlied in Germany or Beowulf in Britain. Indeed, France had established a reputation as a fundamentally “un-epic” culture: rueful citations of M. de Malezieu’s eighteenth-century conclusion abound in French discussions: “The French don’t have an epic mind.”69 Scholars recognized the national import of the epic from the beginning of the nineteenth century, with Edgar Quinet lamenting that foreigners knew more

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about the French tradition than the French themselves.70 When Francisque Michel published the first edition of Roland in 1837, he opened the door to a dramatic realignment of literary politics. If Roland could disprove M. de Malezieu, its popular diffusion could contribute to a profound reimagining of the national character. Roland crystallizes the politics of medievalism in the aftermath of 1870. Consolidating the patriotic gestures of the previous decades,71 scholars focused on securing the poem’s French identity. For even though it had been published first in France, and had gained a certain popularity (soldiers sang of Roland in 1870),72 it could not legitimize French national origins without some inventive interpretation: the oldest manuscript resided in Oxford (Bodleian Library, Digby 23), written in an Anglo-Norman dialect (that is, not directly connected to continental France); the poem’s heroic Franks functioned as ethnic predecessors of both the French and the Germans. German scholars, for their part, understood the epic as the product of ancient oral tradition (turning the Franks into proto-Germans); the French supported more recent dates of composition (turning the Franks into proto-Frenchmen). Aside from dating, scholars also debated the degree to which Germanic culture had influenced early medieval “French” institutions (and thus the epic). By highlighting the relative strength of “Gaulish” culture even after the Germanic invasions of the fifth century (as Quinet had done decades earlier), scholars could connect the epic to the most distant origins of French identity. These arguments focused attention on race, conquest, and the immutability of national feeling. The academic promotion of Roland as the quintessential text of French national identity began in immediate reaction to the Prussian invasion— in fact, while Paris was still under siege. During the first week of December 1870, three scholars of very different mindsets turned to Roland to express the need for a new kind of patriotism. On December 3, Charles Lenient opened his course at the Sorbonne with a lecture on Roland; five days later, Gaston Paris began his own course at the Collège de France with Roland; that same day, Léon Gautier signed the introduction to his new edition of the epic.73 These interventions reveal a rather remarkable consensus on the epic’s potential to fortify the weakened nation. All three scholars embrace Roland as a repository of immutable and shared national values. For them, the epic illustrates the superiority of French national life over others (especially German); they call on educational programs to communicate this national character more clearly.74 The state of siege

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gives particular significance to their treatments of conquest and imperialism. While using colonialist metaphors against the Germans, they seek to decolonize medieval French culture by minimizing the effects of previous Germanic conquests. A generation or two later, Bédier voices similar patriotic interpretations that expose the nationalist commitments of his creole medievalism. Throughout all of these discussions, medievalism and colonialism, together, secure a central place for Roland in republican discourse. Lenient’s approach to Roland is the most stridently political of the early commentators. He speaks of “patriotism” rather than of the “nation”; his sense that the Germans have invaded the French literary domain (as well as French territory) with nefarious intent is particularly militant. Nonetheless, he voices a philosophy of the nation widely shared at the time, and subsequently, quite influential: he defines the nation as a feeling rather than a particular geographic area: “what constitutes the homeland, and with it nationality, is the community of ideas, interests, and affections, the free accord of wills and the fraternity of souls.”75 By foregrounding the constitutive power of the desire to belong, Lenient diminishes the impact of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine: geography and political treaties cannot define the frontiers of “une patrie morale” [spiritual homeland]. Most importantly, Lenient turns to France’s colonial legacies to illustrate the portability of this national feeling: “Ask the soldier who carries his homeland across the seas in the folds of his flag. Ask those colonists from Louisana and Canada, whose grandchildren still remember, after two centuries, that they are French.”76 Colonial history here proves the validity of Lenient’s understanding of the nation’s immutability. This conception of national identity, inspired by the pressures of the Prussian invasion, grants overseas territories new significance in the national imaginary: geographic distance no longer impedes national belonging. In other words, the alienation of Alsace brought the colonies (including Réunion) closer to the nation. With geography diminished in favor of sentiment, national belonging became available to everyone with the proper depth of feeling.77 And for Lenient, Roland (“true French Iliad”) modeled the kind of purely French patriotism that could sustain these profoundly national emotions. Gaston Paris’s lecture on Roland covers surprisingly similar ground. Like Lenient, Paris grants literature a privileged place in the conception of national identity. Indeed, he begins by defining literary history as nothing less than the history of national consciousness (he had already consecrated the epic as the highest form of national poetry).78 For Paris, literature expresses

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and preserves the essence of national feeling. Nations function through the shared loved of their members, rendering “true nations” impervious to territorial challenges.79 The epic propagates this “patrie morale”—a particular feeling rather than a particular place. To remedy the current crisis, then, the French should emulate medieval literature: “Let us make ourselves known as the sons of those who died at Roncevaux and of those who avenged them.”80 Paris draws a double lesson from Roland: the French should follow in the footsteps of both Roland (who died gloriously) and Charlemagne (who exacted vengeance for his death). Defeat, in other words, is not the end of the story. And even defeat can signify admirable valor. Indeed, without a grand defeat, there would be no Roland. By pursuing the epic model, Paris suggests that France can achieve even greater glory than before the war. Since the epic shows a resounding victory after seemingly disastrous defeat, it can serve as a vital source of national renewal. Paris not only shares Lenient’s idea of the epic’s national value, he gives colonialism a similarly influential role. Indeed, Paris portrays colonialism as constitutive of the French national character. According to him, France’s two greatest medieval creations —the Crusades (“œuvre française par excellence”) and the epic — witness the foundational role of force in the French nation. For Paris, France has always had an “organic” need to expand.81 Roland thus lies at the basis of French national identity because it glorifies successful conquest. It thereby secures the prestige of colonialism as a national project. At the same time, Roland illustrates the dangers of colonial excess — a second, problematic tendency of the French national character, according to Paris. As an example, Paris cites Charlemagne’s conversion at sword-point of the residents of Saragossa: “Do you not recognize, in these naively atrocious procedures, some of the errors that are not completely extinguished in our country?”82 Force makes this scene “imperial” rather than “national” (earlier, Paris contrasts “natural” French expansionism with “artificial” imperialism based on force; he also presciently critiques the mission civilisatrice decades before its popularization).83 Since even “natural” expansion involves force, Paris suggests that the French must vigilantly monitor their actions—adopting medieval models of justified national glory and avoiding medieval models of imperial tyranny. Both tendencies appear in Roland, which powerfully condenses the “positive” and “negative” strains of medievalism adopted by republican discourse.

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Gautier, for all of his differences from Lenient and Paris, takes a similar approach to national feeling. Like Paris, Gautier posits the self-conscious nation as the epic’s inspiration, and finds the Crusades its natural counterpart.84 And like both Paris and Lenient, Gautier minimizes geography’s role in national identity as he describes Roland’s typical noble reader: “He loves France passionately, without really knowing how far it extends. His patriotism is not a question of borders.”85 As for Roland itself, Gautier makes its material existence the object of his patriotic attentions: he recommends that no sacrifice by spared to “repatriate” the manuscript held in Oxford.86 Likewise, he praises Francisque Michel’s 1837 edition as a fated French triumph against German philology: “Thanks be given to God, whose providence extends to literary studies: it is a Frenchman who had this glory and not a German.”87 Gautier, like Lenient, draws an explicit parallel between the literary and military domains: “the Prussian fights in the same way that he critiques a text, with the same precision and the same method.”88 Gautier states explicitly that the events of 1870 have given Roland, and France’s relation with German philology, newly urgent significance.89 In the end, Gautier suggests, like Paris, that the French can take consolation from the poem’s grandeur, and derive from it hope for future victory.90 Gautier, like Lenient and Paris, also embraces colonialism as a basis for French national prestige. At the same time, he draws on colonialist metaphors in his passionate dismissal of Germanic cultural achievements. He credits Charlemagne with saving the French from descending “to the level of a small Germanic tribe.”91 In the introduction to his edition, he asks: Where were they when our song was written, our haughty invaders? They were wandering in savage bands in the shadow of forests without names: they knew only how to pillage and kill. When we were holding with a hand so firm our great shining sword alongside the armed and defended Church, what were they? Mohicans and Redskins.92 Here and elsewhere, racialist and colonialist metaphors define Gautier’s notion of the primitive —a transhistoric foil to French civilization.93 Some years later, Bédier takes up the same North American reference in defense of medieval French culture: “Let us not refuse to the people of

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the Merovingian period [fifth–eighth centuries] what even the Redskins or the Botocudos have: singers, devil’s songs, dancing songs, spectacles, fables.”94 Bédier and Gautier both use the names of indigenous American tribes to articulate the cultural differences that, for them, define France from its earliest medieval moments. The grandeur they claim for French culture lies ultimately in its “universality.” For Gautier, Roland can thus serve a vital role in the modern French empire: “under every latitude, among all races, always and everywhere, the death of Roland will quicken the heart of an Indian or an Arab, just as it quickens ours.”95 Gautier attributes to the poem such universal appeal that even colonial “primitives” can appreciate its values; he imagines Roland as an instrument of the mission civilisatrice that will inspire identification among readers of all races. In this assessment, the epic serves the Republican empire by dramatically conflating medievalism and colonialism. The colonialist metaphors used by Gautier, Paris, and Lenient serve to “decolonize” medieval France, a vital historiographical project in the wake of 1870. Anti-German medievalism made “France” appear separate from “Germany” as early as the fifth century. Among the most influential writers in this vein was Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, who had taught at the University of Strasbourg in Alsace until 1870. Fustel published several essays around 1870 that denied Germanic culture any formative role in France’s origins, despite the fifth-century Germanic occupation of “French” territory. Whereas the literary scholars (including Gautier) took for granted that France emerged from a double conquest by the Romans and the Germans, and from a fusion of races, Fustel sought to demonstrate that the Germanic tribes had not in fact brought any lasting cultural institutions, and were not even really conquerors. In Fustel’s view, a properly national understanding of medieval France was needed to end both internal strife and external challenges: while the Germans had unified their country through shared love of their past, the French fought amongst themselves over historical interpretation and had grown weaker as a result.96 Fustel’s method depends partly on the same emotional understanding of the nation expressed by Lenient, Paris, and Gautier. Indeed, the phrasing of a famous letter published by Fustel in October 1870 echoes through the December writings of Lenient and Gautier. Fustel proclaims pithily: “La patrie, c’est ce qu’on aime” —and since Alsatians loved France, Alsace belonged to France.97 Elsewhere, Fustel defines the nation in distinctly nonterritorial terms: “True patriotism is not love of the soil, it’s love of the past,

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it’s respect for the generations who have preceded us.”98 This combination of history and genealogy emphasizes communal continuity irrespective of a nation’s geopolitical contours. This definition of course targets the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Indeed, Fustel draws the same parallel between German scholarship and German warfare as Lenient and Gautier: “This people has in erudition the same qualities as in war . . . Its historians form an organized army.”99 While the French public looked forward to ending German control of Alsace-Lorraine, Fustel set about reclaiming control of the medieval past. This turn to the Middle Ages aimed to counteract the negative effects of the recent conquest on the national psyche. Fustel’s views of medieval history presage those of another historian who became an immensely influential theorist of French national identity, Ernest Renan.100 Fustel and Renan both challenged German justifications of the annexation of Alsace. Renan did so partly in agreement with the medievalists, eventually adopting Fustel’s anti-Germanic historiography of early medieval France. Renan echoes Fustel, Paris, Lenient, and Gautier by linking both the epic and colonialism to the emotions of national belonging.101 Renan moved quickly to embrace feeling, rather than territory, as the basis of national integrity: while he wrote in 1870 that France without Alsace was not France, in 1871 he declared: “A country is a soul, a conscience, a person, a living effect.”102 Likewise, he moved from an antiimperial definition of the nation to a clear commitment to colonialism: “Large-scale colonization is a political necessity of absolutely first order.”103 Renan thus makes the same distinction as Paris between the oppressive “artificial” empires of other European countries and France’s “noble need” for expansion. The French nation, moreover, begins just prior to France’s first colonial endeavors, the Crusades: “As of the tenth century, Francia is completely national.”104 Bédier will characterize France’s origins in almost identical terms, positing a durable national integrity that also coincides with the genesis of the epic. Not incidentally, this nonterritorial definition of the nation provides the conceptual ground for creole national belonging: once “France” becomes more of a feeling than a specific territory, distant lands are as “close” as they feel. Renan elaborates on his understanding of national identity in his famous 1882 speech at the Sorbonne, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation” [What Is a Nation?]. The speech follows closely the structure of Fustel’s 1870 letter, dismissing successively race, language, and history as bases for national

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belonging. In the end, only feeling remains: “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle, a moral conscience.”105 In Renan’s argument, feelings of national unity emerge when people have forgotten their histories of conquest and racial mixing. Renan’s focus on feeling makes “consent” the basis of territorial jurisdiction — a clear plea for Alsatians to decide the fate of Alsace.106 Despite dismissing historical determinants, Renan maintains ancestor worship in his conception of national cohesion: “The cult of the ancestors is most legitimate of all; the ancestors made us who we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (I mean true glory), that is the social capital on which one builds a national idea.”107 And the “national idea” of France begins with the epic: “In the tenth century, in the first epics, which are such a perfect mirror of the spirit of the times, all the inhabitants of France are French.”108 While previously Renan had judged Roland lacking in beauty and Charlemagne “a course German stablehand,”109 the concerns of national identity after 1870 ultimately prompted a reversal —stripping the epic of Germanic associations and imbuing it with purely French culture. Renan thus participates in the diffusion of republican medievalism and epic nationalism after 1870. Decades later, Bédier articulated a vision of early French history nearly identical to his predecessors who wrote in the 1870s: The Middle Ages is the indefinite mixing of the supposed Aryans of the Saxon forest, the so-called sons of the She-wolf, the GalloRomans, the Hispano-Romans, the Celts of Great Britain, until the days when, around 1000, at last the five nations took some vague conscience of themselves, still uncertain of their fundamental being — France, England, Italy, Spain, Germany — which ever since have worked best for the good of men.110 Bédier here recognizes the absence of pure racial genealogies in Europe, while affirming the absolute integrity of national genealogies. The conquests that led to pan-European métissage long forgotten, nations emerged and have remained unchanged ever since. The “French people,” according to Bédier, is not an amorphous mass but an infinitely renewable fixed character transmitted from generation to generation; their emotions explain everything there is to know about the epic.111 The formation of this people’s collective “consciousness” remains somewhat mystical: neither Bédier nor

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Renan explains how or why it came into being in the tenth century. The broad similarities between Bédier’s summary of national origins and Renan’s, however, locate Bédier’s medievalism at the heart of French national thought. Conversely, Renan’s famous formulations consecrate the medievalists’ vision of national history, including its epic origins. The consistent recourse of all of these thinkers—from Fustel to Lenient to Paris to Gautier to Renan to Bédier—to a national identity founded on emotions illustrates how the events of 1870 opened conceptual space for both the Middle Ages and overseas territories to enter the national imaginary. Alongside these definitions of the nation as a tenth-century phenomenon reflected in the epic, revisions to early medieval historiography also privileged the enduring integrity of ancient Gaul as France’s ultimate origin. Recourse to the Gauls racialized French identity, thereby strengthening national unity and minimizing the significance of the territorial losses of the Franco-Prussian war. Fustel, for example, installed the Gauls as France’s heroic founders, a view with immense appeal after 1870 (even if it contradicted archeological evidence).112 Commentators drew numerous parallels between the Gauls and the modern French as resistors of Germanic invaders.113 France’s Gaulish origins appear in numerous popular forms, including history books and public displays.114 The success of Gaulish nationalism can be measured by Charlemagne’s somewhat precarious status as a national hero in the 1870s (before the widespread influence of Roland): in 1878, the government of Paris criticized a proposed statue of him on the grounds that he was not a Gaul and therefore “foreign” to properly French tradition.115 France’s Gaulish origins became a matter of national policy in 1884 when Lavisse published the first edition of his history textbook, which popularized a Franco-Gaulish genealogy, “Nos ancêtres les Gaulois.” It offered all children of the empire a curriculum devoted to a French prestige anchored in the Gauls and the Middle Ages (“Nos ancêtres les Gaulois” still epitomizes the absurdities of colonial education and the mission civilisatrice).116 The Gauls also served to justify French colonialism: if Roman conquest had been good for them, then French conquest could be good for Africa.117 All of these arguments claim the earliest possible date for the “French Middle Ages,” which in turn serve as a model for later national and colonial projects. Historians like Lavisse worked to integrate the Gauls and the Franks into a continuous national genealogy. Roland played a significant role in

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this process. Largely as a result of Gautier’s vigorous promotion of patriotic pedagogy, the epic became obligatory reading in French secondary schools in 1880 (for girls in 1882); the first translations for young children appeared in 1885.118 Gautier aspired to an exceptionally broad audience (including children, women, peasants, and factory workers), and hoped to inspire every citizen’s admiration and respect for France’s greatest epic— and for France itself, “the most epic of all the modern nations.”119 In preface after preface, and in the monumental revision of his Epopées françaises (1878–92), he extolled the virtues of a traditionalist Catholic nation inspired by the Middle Ages. Indeed, reformers of all kinds believed in the epic’s power to fortify national identity (although some complained that excessive reliance on German methods betrayed French values).120 Many tied the epic directly to the project of educating French youth about the importance of revanche against Germany.121 Others found that reading Roland provided children with effective lessons in citizenship: it could turn them from primitive foreigners (“ils vivent parmi nous comme des étrangers”) into civilized members of French society; it could also warn them about the exploitative excesses of the colonial mission to civilize the “inferior races.”122 By 1900, Roland anchored a patriotic literary history for all students in France, from primary school through university. The epic was thus an important part of the broader educational reforms that aimed to strengthen national cohesion as well as technical proficiency. The first generation of students to experience these educational reforms included Joseph Bédier. In 1880 Bédier began his final year at the Lycée de Saint-Denis, where his teachers placed great emphasis on the scientific and moral advantages of the new methods;123 he went on to pass one of the first agrégations (1886) to include Roland. Bédier’s initiation into the discourse of epic nationalism, however, began much earlier: in 1878, at the age of fourteen, he received a copy of Gautier’s Roland when his teachers awarded him top honors in French composition. Whether Bédier received a copy of the hefty 1872 edition (with the introduction signed during the siege of 1870) or one of the later editions designed for schools (4th and 5th ed. 1875, 6th ed. 1876), he would have read Roland through a patriotic prism formed by Gautier’s nationalism, colonial pedagogy, and elite creole society. Bédier later located the origin of his interest in medieval studies in this formative encounter with Roland, under the mango tree of his family home in Saint-Denis.124 In this moment, the epic generated creole medievalism — and the creole reader recognized his culture in the epic.

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As a professional medievalist, Bédier went on to argue strenuously in favor of Roland’s purely French identity. He concluded that the poem represented France’s most “national” text: We find in it what is most specifically national in our poetry — the classical sense of proportions, clarity, sobriety, harmonious force. We recognize in it the spirit of our nation, just as well as we do in the work of Corneille [seventeenth-century dramatist].125 Bédier here echoes the vigorously nationalist esthetics of Lenient, who also compared Roland’s language to Corneille’s, and Roland himself to Corneille’s Cid.126 Like Lenient and the others who wrote about Roland around 1870, Bédier lauded the epic’s ability to fortify national feeling in the modern era.127 When he arrived in Germany to study in 1887, he encountered a monumental reminder of the national rivalries sparked by the text he had first read a decade earlier in Saint-Denis: a giant statue of Roland in the town of Halle (“half fierce, half weak”).128 He later opened his first course at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (1893) with the wistful observation that Germany had ten times more specialists working on medieval France than France itself.129 Later, in the Légendes épiques (1908–13), he directly attacked German theories of French literary history. Critics heralded the four-volume work for its timely contribution to French national interests.130 Bédier even cast the virulently patriotic Gautier as excessively germanisant because he had accepted that the epic had a Germanic base.131 Bédier’s anti-Germanism mirrors that of other scholars of his generation, who continued the scholarly politics that emerged from the national traumas of 1870.132 He makes the same comparisons between philology and battlefields as Lenient and Gautier —only for him superiority has shifted to the French side.133 In a sense, Bédier cast the entirety of his international career in terms of revanche: he saw his teaching appointment in Fribourg as a way of resisting German dominance on the faculty; he recommended France do more to counter German influence in the United States; his greatest aspiration in 1913 was a professorial chair at a repatriated University of Strasbourg: “And we’ll see [Alsace’s return], soon, when we will have given them a licking, which is easier than they think.”134 Beyond academic concerns, Bédier expressed negative ethnic prejudices: downplaying events in the Balkans in 1912, he affirmed that “the only thing that lasts in our national sentiment is our hatred of the Germans”; during the war he

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referred to German philologists as “pigs”; he declared himself more proud of his wartime work than of his Légendes épiques “because it will make the Germans scream with anger and humiliation”; after the war, he publicly vowed to maintain his hatred, “I am resolved, for my part, never again to have anything to do with a German: any German, for as long as I live, will remain for me a Kraut.”135 Bédier reportedly considered the war an ongoing national conflict and remained vocal on matters of patriotism.136 His positions may have been known in Germany, for the Nazis reportedly visited the Collège de France soon after entering Paris in 1940, seeking documents related to the recently deceased Bédier.137 Bédier contributed to epic nationalism throughout his war-related writings. While working at the Ministry of War on Les crimes allemands (presented as official proof of German war crimes),138 Bédier also adapted the epic Légende d’Aliscamps into a short play, La chevalerie, which opened at the Comédie Française at the beginning of 1915. La chevalerie, like Roland, makes killing and dying beautiful. Focused on the ritual dubbing of three noble brothers, the play extols the virtues of serving France with the sword: the young men are all impatient to begin shedding blood (their own and that of their enemy); they resist service in a peaceful court in favor of battle, defying their fathers’ wishes by swearing never to retreat. In both La chevalerie and Roland, idealized violence underwrites the legitimacy of French national action. When Bédier died in 1938, memorialists praised both La chevalerie and Les crimes allemands (even though the play had a relatively short run); Marcel Prévost specifically advised the French to re-read Les crimes allemands: “It will help us predict the future.”139 The simultaneity of La chevalerie and Les crimes allemands, as Alain Corbellari points out, symbolizes the intimate union of Bédier’s medievalism and his politics.140 Bédier also adopts an epic voice in one of his last military publications, “La pression allemande sur le front français” (1918). He begins by praising French virtues as “hereditary, the kind that can’t be improvised.”141 This racialist view of the national character, in which only autochthonous Frenchmen participate, derives from an idealized medievalism. In conclusion, Bédier masterfully replaces his individual voice with that of the “national soul”: after a detailed statistical analysis of how reduced resources have not weakened Germany’s military performance, Bédier urges France’s leaders, in the name of mass public opinion, not to hesitate to raise more troops.142 By claiming to speak for the whole citizenry, Bédier renders his

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personal conviction collective. He thus writes in an “epic” vein, expressing ideals that have remained unchanged since the Middle Ages. In this period of acute nationalism, Bédier produced his edition of Roland, first published in 1922. Bédier expresses epic nationalism most succinctly in his presentation of extracts from the forthcoming book. He situates the poem squarely within the patriotic practice of epic criticism initiated by Lenient, Paris, and Gautier. He begins by stating that he has designed the edition, not for scholars, but for the general reader: “it is fitting that all educated people read the old poem and find it pleasing.”143 Reading Roland, in other words, is the most natural activity for educated citizens. Even if they read the translation, they will connect with France’s epic origins. For Bédier asserts that originals shine through even the most tendentious renderings. The original language, moreover, possesses an aristocratic style “impregnated with the influences of Latin Antiquity” [“imprégnée des influences de l’antiquité latine”]. This phrasing places Roland in the direct lineage of the Aeneid, underscoring the transfer of cultural prestige from Rome to France. Bédier goes on to posit the pure unity of the French language at the moment of the poem’s composition: This style is already that of a classic, it is already a noble style. As of the beginning of the twelfth century, the France of the first Crusades moves toward creating, constituting in dignity, above the diversity of its dialects and patois, this marvel, a national language, that of its elite, a literary language.144 Bédier here nationalizes the very beginnings of French literature on the basis of a language for which there is no direct evidence in the Oxford manuscript of Roland. To the degree that broad-based conventions for literary expression developed in northern “France” during the twelfth century, they hardly constitute a national sentiment. The glories of Roland’s French style thus derive solely from the projections of epic nationalism. The efforts of literary scholars, historians, and new generations of writers formed by the pedagogy of patriotic medievalism combined to make “epic” and “national” virtual synonyms in the course of the Third Republic.145 This conflation appears succinctly in Senator Fabre’s 1901 translation of Roland, “épopée du patriotisme,” dedicated to the national army. Epic nationalism surfaces with particular verve in publications celebrating French heroism during the war of 1914–18.146 Various writers refer specifically

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to Roland, while French generals held up epics (and Bédier himself) as laudable sources of military valor.147 Admirers praised Bédier’s own book, L’effort français, as a great epic honoring French soldiers: “France, the sweet France of Roland, has never been more noble, more crusading.”148 These comments directly praise Bédier’s fusions of chivalry, nationalism, and literature. The epic also expressed the national significance of colonialism, as evidenced in the widespread use of such phrases as l’épopée coloniale and l’épopée africaine.149 The Leblonds, in fact, defined colonial literature as essentially epic in nature.150 As French conquests overseas accumulated, they were often cited as proof that France did indeed have a “tête coloniale,” contrary to the popular image of Frenchmen as sedentary and geographically ignorant.151 The nationalization of the epic genre, and of Roland in particular, thus proved doubly valuable: it refuted assumptions about France’s incapacity for both epic literature and colonial action. Quite probably Roland gained its “disproportionate” role in national discourse in part through its depiction of a North African enemy—an image congenial to France’s pursuit of dominance in Algeria and other regions.152 The epic genre thus proved instrumental in reforming French identity on multiple levels, including the military, the historical, and the academic.153 As the epic became national, colonialism gained an ancient heroic lineage, and medievalism a republican pedigree. In the course of the Third Republic, historians and literary scholars forged powerful connections among the Middle Ages, its imperial legacies, and the ideals of modern France. Their lessons reached a broad and impressionable audience through the education system —including the young Bédier. As a colonial subject educated in both Saint-Denis and Paris 1870s and 1880s, Bédier is both a product and a shaper of republican medievalism. His scholarship ultimately ratifies the nationalization of the epic begun by Gautier, Paris, and others in the 1870s, ensuring its political vitality through the first half of the twentieth century. The colonial genesis of Bédier’s medievalism, moreover, provides an important index of the formative roles of both colonialism and medievalism in the consolidation of republican nationalism. Shuttling between Réunion and Paris, Bédier’s creole medievalism captures the dualistic tensions of French republicanism —a prestigious yet barbaric Middle Ages, a valuable yet primitive colonial empire, a nation defined by emotions yet dependent on territorial

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conquest. Bédier’s creole medievalism, while unique, participates fully in these broader republican dynamics. Colonialism and medievalism together form the ground from which creole medievalism emerged and the fertile terrain in which it took root. Medievalism, inflected with colonial memory, could address the very foundations of the national imaginary. Steeped in idealized visions of aristocratic tradition, a Réunionnais creole could approach the Middle Ages as an indigenous patrimony. From the perspective of Réunion, where elites identified themselves as faithful echoes of primordial French culture and champions of colonial expansion, the contours of the imperial nation look particularly broad and deep. They run continuously from Roncevaux to Réunion, converging on the uncanny scene of a young creole reading Roland under a mango tree in Saint-Denis.

· CHAPTER 2 ·

Medieval and Colonial Attractions

T

he educational policies that made Roland central to republican pedagogy soon popularized epic nationalism, for they reached every child who attended school. These same children also learned of France’s obligations to advance civilization overseas. Outside of formal instruction, French citizens encountered medievalism and colonialism in numerous everyday venues —from newspapers to advertising to caféconcerts to church. Some of the most spectacular manifestations took place during the expositions universelles, or World Fairs. All of the expositions that took place in Paris during Bédier’s residence (1889, 1900, 1931, 1937) featured reconstructions of medieval and colonial settings. Each exposition materialized for millions of visitors the importance of both the Middle Ages and the colonies to French national identity. Creative architecture and performances aimed to persuade the public of the value of imperial nationalism. Organizers envisioned that visitors would leave the exposition with a new sense of national unity. To this end, the expositions combined didacticism and seductive exoticism to foster both medievalism and colonialism as expressions of republicanism. By frequently conflating distant times and distant places, the expositions reveal the mutating role of “otherness” in the national imagination, with direct affects on metropolitan conceptions of Réunion. In constructing medieval and colonial buildings, exposition organizers suggested that two of France’s least visible attributes (its medieval past and its overseas dominions) symbolized its most cherished aspirations. Although the colonies were by their nature “out of sight,” the relative invisibility of the medieval was a new phenomenon in Paris. In the 1850s, the emperor Louis-Napoléon initiated the modernization of the city, replacing its sinuous medieval topographies (and dangerously unhealthy sewer system) with large avenues punctuated by monuments to imperial triumph.1 For its critics, this process traded medieval prestige for colonial · 26 ·

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denigration. Prosper Mérimée compared enthusiasm for the new city to the dance of “negroes around a scalp,” while Louis Veuillot complained that the new cityscape made even the monuments that remained as foreign as the Egyptian Obélisque (installed in 1836).2 By the beginning of the Third Republic, then, the Middle Ages had become almost as “virtual” as the empire in urban Paris. Represented by a few monuments shorn of their historical contexts, the medieval and the colonial became equally available for reconstruction as fabricated sites of national longing. As celebrations of French achievements, the expositions also engaged France’s perennially fraught relations with Germany. The exposition of 1900 originated partly in reaction to German plans. Following vigorous press debate and politicking in both countries, the French government announced its exposition in 1892, much further in advance than previous expositions.3 Official German representatives came to France for the first time since the Franco-Prussian War, with an exhibit that used more space and brought more tourists than any other foreign country.4 Even though the French government and its citizens had certainly not forgotten the defeat of 1870, official guides treated the German exhibits with the same enthusiasm as those from other countries.5 This moment of partial reconciliation contrasts sharply with the colonial exposition of 1931, in which Germany had only a small stand in the information center. Meanwhile, France showcased how it had improved Germany’s former colonies, Togo and Cameroon (assigned to French protection in 1919).6 In fact, the exposition’s earlier title, Exposition Coloniale Interalliée, specifically excluded Germany (neither a colonial power nor an ally). The exposition thus sought to bolster unity within France by focusing on colonial nationalism, while consolidating European alliances as a deterrent to future German aggression.7 Six years later, the 1937 exposition signaled new political alignments: the German pavilion faced off with the USSR’s, framing the entrance to the other international pavilions with monuments to fascist grandeur.8 Together, the expositions of the Third Republic crystallize the history of Franco-German relations that informs both colonialism and French medieval studies. In addition to illustrating some of the dominant themes of republican nationalism (medievalism, colonialism, anti-Germanism), the expositions also capture the ideals of the Réunionnais elite and the emergence of Bédier’s public status as an iconic creole subject. Colonial exhibits generally featured the colonies’ economic resources or indigenous exoticism.

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The relatively small, immigrant society of Réunion had little to offer in terms of either. Yet the Réunionnais elite, natives of a “colonizing colony,” shared fully in the nation’s imperial ideals. The Réunionnais exhibits thus sought to shift the terms of colonial value from economics to culture. They did not, however, have the decisive impact that organizers wished. Metropolitan discourse had little ideological space for a colony that did not need “civilizing.” If exposition organizers sought to teach the French about themselves — through their past and their colonies—Réunionnais elites already knew the lessons by heart. Réunionnais exhibits illustrated this tension as elite creoles strove to establish a cultural identity that the metropole would recognize, and metropolitans continued to seek economic value and exoticism. Réunionnais displays sought to enhance the island’s value by emphasizing its faithfulness to the oldest and best aspects of French culture— and by distancing it from newer, “uncivilized” colonies. In the 1920s and 1930s, they did so by presenting Bédier as the greatest living representative of creole culture. By invoking his name and displaying his scholarship, organizers made creole medievalism central to their own sense of national belonging. Through Bédier, the Réunionnais installations embedded medievalism within colonialism and colonialism within medieval scholarship. Organizers thereby defended themselves against metropolitan tendencies to associate them with “primitive” colonial subjects. Laying claim to the prestige of the Middle Ages through the prestige of Bédier the medievalist, they drew on the “positive” side of medievalism to create an equally “positive” image of colonialism —deflecting the “negative” connotations of both. Bédier thus became central to Réunionnais strategies of selfrepresentation. His name marks the place where nationalist medievalism met creole imperialism. 1889, Republican Medievalism

The first exposition that brought Réunion and the Middle Ages to Paris during Bédier’s residency opened on 6 May 1889 — about a year and half after Bédier returned from a visit to Réunion, and soon after he returned from studying in Germany. At the time, he worked as an instructor at the École Normale Supérieure, leaving for his first professorship in Fribourg, Switzerland, shortly before the exposition closed in early November. Bédier’s closest friend Joseph Texte writes of the exposition in detail,

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although there is no direct evidence that Bédier himself visited (he certainly spent time with his cousin De Mahy, Réunion’s elected deputy, both in the capital and in the Touraine).9 Regardless of whether Bédier visited the exposition, Réunion’s participation gives some sense of his diaspora community: Bédier and his compatriots considered themselves fully “French,” while metropolitans often judged them inferior “colonials.” Representations of the colonial and the medieval at the exposition, moreover, manifest in popular form the nationalist discourse that traversed medieval studies as Bédier began his career. Official assessments of Réunion’s displays in the brightly painted Palais des Colonies (Figure 2) reveal Réunion’s double bind within colonial ideology. On the one hand, the Guide bleu describes Réunion as the “jewel of the Indian Ocean” and notes the “opulent” display of local products, from household objects to plants to maps.10 On the other hand, the exposition’s goals excluded Réunion from significant imperial participation: the inhabitants did not need to be “pacified”; the small economy could not alleviate the challenges of foreign competition.11 And because colonial ethnography assigned immigrants and their descendents to their original homeland, regardless of their place of birth or residence, Réunion technically had no “indigenous” culture.12 Réunion’s Eurocentric elites responded with a display that largely erased the island’s cultural particularities: scenes from the eighteenth-century novel Paul et Virginie made entirely of ferns.13 The novel was very popular in the metropole, authored by a metropolitan (Bernardin de Saint-Pierre), and set on the island of Mauritius. In other words, it had no direct relation to Réunion (except that metropolitans frequently confused Réunion and Mauritius). Réunionnais nonetheless made themselves the guardians of the novel’s legacy after France lost Mauritius to Britain in 1810.14 As an emblem of “Réunionnais” identity, Paul et Virginie represents the island’s dependence on immigration and imports. In the end, metropolitan commitments to exoticism and economic opportunity left Réunion isolated from the rest of the empire. Opposite the Palais des Colonies stood the Ministry of War, with the façade of a medieval fortified castle (Figure 3).15 From the top of the central alley of the Esplanade des Invalides, then, visitors could see simultaneously the pointed towers of exhibits evoking medieval and colonial France — with the “national” dome of the Hôtel des Invalides in the background (Figure 4). From within the colonial gardens, visitors could see

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Figure 2. Palais des Colonies, Exposition Universelle, 1889. Neurdein Collection / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

across the alley to the castle’s crenellated towers, portcullis, and drawbridge (Figure 5). This view is particularly poignant from a Réunionnais perspective because the gardens also included a statue of Paul and Virginie sheltering themselves under a large leaf (lower right corner). This image was widely used to refer to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s novel (cf. Figure 6), referencing an even more popular image of the two sheltering under Virginie’s skirt.16 The statue reinforced Réunionnais attachments to the novel represented inside the Palais. In sight of the medieval façade, Paul and Virginie stood for the chivalric and aristocratic lineages claimed by creole elites. In the frame of the Palais and the medieval façade, Paul and Virginie gesture toward the romantic dimensions of Bédier’s own creole medievalism as developed in his Tristan et Iseut (see chapter 4). The exhibit inside the Ministry of War illustrated the persistent interpenetration of medievalism and colonialism, with displays of ancient weapons, reconstructions of historic sieges, and numerous pieces of Asian military equipment.17 While the organizer Émile Monod lamented the popularity of colonial belly dancers, he took solace in visitors’ attraction to Napoléon’s sword at the Ministry of War.18 The constructions along the Esplanade des Invalides underscored the intimate relation between these two phenomena. From the threshold of the portcullis, looking toward the

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Figure 3. L’Exposition du Ministère de la Guerre, Exposition Universelle, 1889. From Glücq, L’album de l’Exposition, 1889, plate 63. The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida. Gift of Edward E. Post, XB2003.06.27.33. Photograph by Silvia Ros.

Palais des Colonies, France’s military successes appeared to lead directly to its colonial achievements, which in turn brought exotic women to dance in the shadows of French history. On the centennial of the Revolution, then, exposition organizers sought to solidify the idea of the Republic as the guardian of the nation’s medieval and colonial legacies—a message given elaborate form along the Esplanade des Invalides.19 The parallels between colonialism and medievalism implied along the Esplanade des Invalides appeared throughout the exposition. Vendors everywhere, not just in the colonial section, sold food and drink from the colonies.20 And many thematic exhibits included retrospectives that stretched back to the Middle Ages, along with comparisons to the colonies.21 The “rage for retrospectivity,”22 in other words, went hand in hand with colonial exoticism.

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Figure 4. Esplanade des Invalides, Exposition Universelle, 1889. Library of Congress, Lot 6634, no. 240.

The popularity of these compressed “world tours” translated into large profits for both medieval and colonial attractions, like the reconstruction of the fourteenth-century Bastille on one side of Avenue Suffren and Cairo street scenes on the other. At the Bastille, performers reenacted the taking of the fortress that launched the Revolution (a dramatization that drew more on the “negative” valence of medievalism).23 Meanwhile, in the “Rue du Caire,” visitors admired exotic dancers, tasted “strange” foods, and shopped for souvenirs.24 Nearby, at 15 Avenue Bosquet, stood another reconstructed medieval tower, housing a panorama illustrating the life of Jeanne d’Arc, surrounded by relics from the period.25 A popular theater production, Paris après l’Exposition, brought Jeanne d’Arc together with the denizens of the Rue du Caire and other popular exposition scenes.26 All of these events placed distant times and places in the service of republican celebration. Near the resurrected Bastille, directly in front of the Eiffel Tower, stood yet another juncture of medievalism and colonialism—an exhibit of archi-

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Figure 5. Garden of the Palais des Colonies, Exposition Universelle, 1889. Library of Congress, Lot 6634, no. 279.

tectural history designed by the famous architect of the Opéra, Charles Garnier. Like the colonial section on the Esplanade des Invalides, L’Histoire de l’Habitation Humaine offered “a tour of the world in one hour.”27 Garnier’s installation, a kind of architectural phrenology, aimed to reveal the most “evolved” civilizations through their architecture, “progressing” from a troglodyte cave to a medieval French house, passing through the Bronze Age, Greece, Africa, Aztec Mexico, and Scandinavia, among other civilizations.28 Each of the forty-four houses was surrounded by gardens of native plants and inhabited by “simulated natives” offering handcrafts and “appropriate native refreshments.”29 For houses representing areas under French imperial control, costumed “natives” represented the “primitive” stage of their own cultures. “Ancient” scenes performed by colonial actors suggested that colonial time had stopped in the Middle Ages: one Sénégalais worker complained that tourists refused to believe that his house had electricity.30

Figure 6. Paul et Virginie. Sculpted relief. Gift of Ary Leblond. Copyright 2008 Musée du Quai Branly / Photo Scala, Florence.

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Figure 7. Medieval house in the exhibition L’Histoire de l’Habitation Humaine, Exposition Universelle, 1889. Neurdein Collection / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

At the medieval house (known as the “house of Charlemagne’s lineage”), costumed actors also served refreshments, while others demonstrated glass making (Figure 7).31 As one commentator noted, “Our most distant contemporaries and our oldest ancestors will thus parade under our eyes.”32 Representing the culmination of “Aryan” architecture,33 the medieval house entered seamlessly into the racialized discourse of colonialism. Juxtaposed against the iron foot of the Eiffel Tower, which rose immediately behind the house (and which Garnier detested), it stood for France’s most ancient histories as well as its most recent achievements.34 As the official seat of the French president at the exposition,35 the medieval house placed republican authority at the culmination of world history. L’Histoire de l’Habitation Humaine thus strategically conflated medievalism, colonialism, and republicanism.

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Across the Seine, visitors walked past a reconstructed medieval ruin before entering the Palais du Trocadéro36 —a more permanent tribute to republican efforts to conjoin medievalism and colonialism. Built for the exposition of 1878, the Palais housed the Musée d’Ethnographie and the Musée de Sculpture Comparée. The architect and medievalist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc participated actively in the foundation of both museums, with special attention to the French Middle Ages in the sculpture museum. Together, the museums made the medieval past key to understanding the colonial present. They built upon earlier research that had applied the techniques of phrenology to medieval skulls, extracting proof of their closer proximity to modern “primitives” than to modern Europeans.37 The museums thus cast Africa as the living vestige of medieval Europe.38 These conflations encouraged a “temporal” approach to colonial societies (“they live in the past”) and a racial approach to medieval societies. Indeed, one observer in 1900 applied the principles of phrenology to Charlemagne, concluding that the first French monarchs were all “tall, blond, with elongated craniums.”39 The museums, in more durable forms than the exposition itself, fostered this kind of ethnographic medievalism. During the exposition, the Palais du Trocadéro housed a medieval art exhibit that included an ivory oliphant, or horn, from Toulouse (Figure 8).40 At the time, such decorated horns were attributed “Oriental” origins, meaning that their medieval history overlapped with France’s colonial present. They had arrived in France, or so people thought, in the wake of the nation’s first colonizing ventures—the eleventh-century Crusades. Schoolchildren in the 1880s and 1890s learned that Roland itself had inspired the Crusades,41 directly implicating surviving oliphants in triumphalist colonialism. In the poem, Roland uses an oliphant to call Charlemagne back to Roncevaux to avenge his defeat (see chapter 5). Indeed, the oliphant displayed at the art exhibit was popularly called “Roland’s horn.” This oliphant thus references all that Roland had come to mean in both academic and popular circles by the late 1880s—patriotic heroism, valiant conquest, and ancient national prestige. For Bédier, the oliphant could activate quite specific memories of Réunion, where he had first read Roland ten years earlier. The exposition’s yoking together of the medieval and the colonial in the service of national identity is crystallized in the seal of the City of Paris, widely associated with the Republic itself after 1889. The seal attached the

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Figure 8. Oliphant, Cor de Roland. Musée Paul-Dupuy, Toulouse.

Republic symbolically to monarchical and imperial tradition: it originated as the emblem of medieval water carriers, was later adopted by Louis XIV, and in 1853, it was elaborated by Baron Haussmann, who added the phrase Fluctuat nec mergitur [It is tossed by the waves, but does not sink].42 The seal captures the mix of medievalism and colonialism that fortified republican nationalism: the crown has the form of a medieval fortified wall (with crenellated towers similar to the façade at the 1889 exposition); the ship evokes overseas domination.43 The emblem appeared on at least one souvenir booklet from the exposition and had already been adopted by Réunionnais republicans in 1879.44 The seal’s evocation of aristocratic prestige and colonial ambition speaks directly to the aspirations (if not the achievements) of creole republicans. Their precocious claim on national symbolism suggests the special affinity of elite creoles for republican medievalism, an affinity given a scholarly dimension by Bédier and of which he himself eventually became a symbol. 1900, Twentieth-Century Medievalism

The Fluctuat nec mergitur seal adorns several structures built for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and still visible today, including the Petit Palais (entry gate [Figure 9], interior ceiling, two front corners, and at regular intervals around the roof) and the Pont d’Alexandre (center of one side over the water, on each of the lamps along the sidewalks). In 1900, it also greeted visitors at the entrance of the temporary Palais des Armées.45 Thus imprinted on prominent structures, the seal popularized the associations between medievalism and colonialism that once again characterized organizers’ approach to representing France to itself and the world.

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Figure 9. Entrance to the Petit Palais, built for the Exposition Universelle, 1900. Photograph by the author, November 2007.

Throughout the exposition, exoticism and nostalgia brought popularity and commercial success, from art exhibits to military displays to foreign pavilions to restaurants.46 Exhibits in 1900, even more than their 1889 counterparts, underscored continuities between past and present and between the medieval and the colonial. And in 1900, Bédier undoubtedly witnessed at least some of these displays: he writes that he took breaks from his duties teaching modern literature at the École Normale Supérieure with “walks through the Exposition.”47 As a potential visitor to both “Réunion” and the “Middle Ages,” Bédier represents a unique audience— living the effects of creole medievalism and actively producing scholarship that sustained republican nationalism. Réunion’s relationship with metropolitan culture was as fraught in 1900 as in 1889. While Réunion had its own pavilion in the colonial section on the Trocadéro hill, the building looked exactly like the Guadeloupe pavilion next door and so did not capture a distinctive identity in its architecture (Figure 10). According to A. G. Garsault’s Notice sur la Réunion, however,

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the pavilion’s place on the hill mirrored Réunion’s place in the empire. Garsault writes that it “dominates” the Seine and the other colonial edifices from on high; “from the verandah, dear to all creoles, one discovers a splendid panorama” encompassing the French and foreign colonies as well as the Champ-de-Mars across the Seine. He asserts that the site was so charming, metropolitans and colonials alike flocked to its cool breezes and exquisite refreshments.48 Inside, the Réunion pavilion was decorated in collaboration with the Kervéguen family (relatives and friends of Bédier’s family). In the bar-kiosk, one could buy Garsault’s Notice and listen to a young Réunionnais pianist sing the best-known creole tunes.49 For diaspora creoles like Bédier, the pavilion offered a recollection of home, filled with familiar sounds and flavors, brought, improbably, to the heart of Paris. Beyond describing the pavilion, Garsault’s guide highlights Réunion’s cultural value. Despite economic challenges (largely blamed on imperial policies that favored newer colonies), Garsault depicts Réunion as an exemplary model of French culture: it had produced as many men of influence and achievement as entire countries with much larger populations.50 Indeed, the island offered nothing less than a miniature summary of the entire world: It is a microcosm of the known world, which summarizes the whole world, which contains a sample of all the climates and all the products of the soil, which offers, in a small space, an example of the greatest phenomena of Nature, from the bottomless lake to the volcano crowned in flame.51 Whatever your dreams, Garsault concludes, they could be fulfilled in France’s own Eden. This idealized portrayal granted Réunion special status on multiple levels. Untouched by the ordinary foibles of mankind, the island had the potential to restore both “innocence” and prosperity to France; having perfectly preserved the best aspects of “old” French culture, it could contribute to national rejuvenation. Garsault’s idealization directly counters metropolitan tendencies to identify Réunion with primitive “medieval” practices.52 Despite these natural wonders and cultural achievements, Réunion failed to attract metropolitan attention because it in fact lacked the requisite economic prosperity and ethnic exoticism. Colonial exhibits were

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Figure 10. Réunion pavilion, Exposition Universelle, 1900. From Paris Exposition (New York: R. S. Peale Company, 1900).

designed to showcase commercial values; Réunion’s stagnant economy ensured its marginalization.53 Moreover, Réunion did not present indigenous “specimens” of various “races” like other colonies.54 Metropolitan visitors were thus more likely to ridicule the Réunion exhibit than to admire it. One commentator described Réunion (along with Martinique and Guadeloupe) as “a little melancholic, like honorable old people whose story is over.”55 Another visitor referred to two “useless” items on display: the portable chair (filanzane) of the deposed queen of Madagascar and a painting of Christ attributed to the sixteenth-century Flemish painter Van Dyck.56 These items represented, respectively, Réunion’s “imperial” aspirations (its politicians claimed responsibility for the conquest of Madagascar) and its identification with European culture —not the metropolitan image of a valuable colony. Even those receptive to Réunion’s value found the exhibit disappointing: L. Meillac complained of the absence of colorful items related to Réunion’s famous poets, quoting several stanzas from Leconte de Lisle’s

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poem “Le Manchy” (both so well known that he does not name them). Ironically, later exhibits highlighting poetry and other cultural accomplishments met with no greater success; whatever the approach, Réunion seemed to disappoint metropolitan expectations of colonial performance. The colonial section at large emphasized exoticism, as expected, but organizers also made medieval history an important source of validation for France’s modern ambitions. Jules Charles-Roux, the organizer of the colonial section, wrote that the colonial installations should “prove, history in hand, that the French have always been one of the most colonizing peoples”; he aimed to show “the continuity of the French colonial tradition.”57 Both the medieval and the colonial represented cultures “alien” to modern French life, yet they also demonstrated the durability and desirability of French influence.58 Much like in 1889, these assertions of continuity integrated the medieval and the colonial into a lengthy national history whose prestige now supported republican ideals. The exposition’s layout and presentation in guidebooks encouraged visitors to connect the colonial section to the reconstruction of “Vieux Paris” [Old Paris] further along the Seine (Figure 11). In a savvy display of republican medievalism, the French president opened the whole exposition from a medieval house.59 Official itineraries directed visitors from Vieux Paris to the colonial exhibits, recommending approximately the same amount of time for each miniature city.60 Between the medieval and colonial buildings, visitors passed along the Rue des Nations, with its similar silhouette of stylized historical towers (Figure 12). There, they could pause to enjoy the medieval performance “Andalusia in the time of the Moors.”61 This continuous itinerary from medieval times to colonial spaces underscored uncanny similarities between the two installations. Both included urban street scenes (the Kasbah of Alger and Tunisian souks in the colonial section) and costumed performers, and both featured artisans crafting souvenirs by hand.62 The popular Algerian exhibit also included a reconstruction of “Vieil Alger,” the colonial counterpart to Vieux Paris.63 (And oddly enough, quinine could be purchased both at the Réunion pavilion and in the boutiques of Vieux Paris.)64 For Bédier the creole medievalist, both installations carried strong personal interest, from the Réunion pavilion to medieval boutiques named “Aux quatre fils Aymon” (title of an epic) and “A L’Oriflant” (oliphant, which sold coffees) and houses decorated with fabliaux scenes (the subject of his 1893 university thesis).65 On the right bank of the Seine, then,

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Figure 11. View of Vieux Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1900. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

the medieval and the colonial formed complementary representations of both national and creole identity. Throughout the exposition, numerous other venues represented both distant times and distant places. Avenue Suffren once again hosted a popular pair of attractions, Paris en 1400 and the Rue du Caire—“too successful” not to repeat.66 Paris en 1400 presented many of the same attractions as the Bastille in 1889—artisans, jongleurs, and costumed performers (Figure 13). Theater performances included the Duc d’Egypte— while medieval Egyptian dress inspired a special research project at the Palais du Costume.67 Other medieval installations included La Vielle Auvergne (with Romanesque church and castle), the façade of the Ministry of War (including a large painting of the Fluctuat nec mergitur) (Figure 14), and the “epic” military exhibit featuring medieval knights and crusade references.68 “Roland’s horn” even returned from Toulouse (accompanied by five other oliphants and a reliquary of Charlemagne).69 In fact, visitors encountered history everywhere, flocking to “picturesque” retrospectives.70 They so expected the Middle Ages that many mistook a statue of François I (sixteenth-century monarch) for Jeanne d’Arc.71 Medieval references

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Figure 12. View of international pavilions, Exposition Universelle, 1900. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

demonstrated that the monarchical past was a palpable component of republican identity.72 Meanwhile, colonial-themed attractions made the empire seem equally “at home” in France. Le Tour du Monde featured a “live panorama” of some of the “exotic” countries served by the Messageries Maritimes; the Panorama Transatlantique depicted views of Algeria and Tunis; the Maréorama simulated a trip through the Mediterranean, with views of Marseille and the North African coast; and the Cinéorama simulated a balloon ride, partly over an African desert.73 These colonial diversions mirrored the medieval reenactments taking place along the same streets. The juxtaposition of medieval and colonial exhibits compresses both time and space, facilitating a sense of possession across impossible distances. Tourist guides note, for example, that Vieux Paris and Paris en 1400 enabled visitors to “relive” the life of their fathers, while the colonial section and the Tour du Monde provided access to vast territories in a few hundred square meters.74 These conflations brought the Middle Ages and the empire into the heart of Paris. Conversely, Paris became the source

Figure 13. Poster for the exhibition Paris en 1400, Exposition Universelle, 1900. Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

Figure 14. Palais des Armées de Terre et de Mer, Exposition Universelle, 1900. LL / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

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of vast temporalities and geographies. As Paul Combes concluded about Paris en 1400: “Today, in fact, evokes yesterday.”75 Similarly, one could say that here evoked there. These contortions of perspective became persuasive through “illusions” that promised true knowledge of authentic realities.76 In both the medieval and colonial contexts, the aura of authenticity emerged from the confluence of physical artifacts, creative performances, and visitors’ imaginations. Tellingly, Charles-Roux explains this principle by comparing colonial artifacts to medieval ones: A museum composed of objects of torture, arms, clothing, and utensils from the Middle Ages is as insignificant as the exhibition of fetishes and Béhanzin’s sacrifice table [from Dahomey], if the imagination does not supply everything that is lacking to give these objects their true meaning.77 Serving authenticity through artifice, the colonial and the medieval exhibits conjured an alluring magic that made their lessons irresistible: the colonies were “enchanting” and the medieval was “charmed.”78 Paris en 1400 could not fail to seduce its visitors: “If I did not like the Middle Ages, I would have liked them on the Avenue Suffren”; the exhibit would please even “the most indifferent.”79 The colonial displays were also touted as utterly convincing: “How can one avoid a renewal of pride and faith in the vitality of the nation?”80 Once inevitably educated by the exposition, citizens could assimilate the historical or exotic “other” into their vision of national belonging, without fundamentally altering their idea of France. This philosophy of national cohesion also characterizes Bédier’s writings at the time. He began his career by nationalizing the origins of the esprit gaulois when he argued in Les fabliaux (1893) that the comic tales were quintessentially French (rather than derived from Indian sources); he made the esprit colonisateur a defining characteristic of French identity. At the time of the exposition, he was engaged in the same kinds of popularizations as the designers of Vieux Paris and Paris en 1400: his Tristan et Iseut turned fragments of the medieval tale into a properly modern novel (see chapter 4). Like the exposition’s medieval installations, the book entertains with “authentic” history, conjoining medieval to modern, popular to elite (it was available in both paperback and luxury illustrated editions).81 During the exposition, Bédier collaborated with his cousin

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Louis Artus on a stage adaptation of Tristan et Iseut (intended for either the Comédie Française or Sarah Bernhardt’s theater).82 Dramatic enactments of the Middle Ages enjoyed something of a vogue at the time,83 rendering Bédier’s efforts “popular” in every sense. Bédier’s modernizations thus supported republican desires to link ancient histories to imperial value. To the extent that the national imaginary relied on both medievalism and colonialism, Bédier enjoyed a unique position. As a medievalist, he had professional knowledge of a historical period made vital to republican national values. As a creole, he shared in the dislocations of other colonial subjects. Charles-Roux notes that men from the tropics lose their “true” character under the Paris sky.84 This was so even for fair-skinned men, for what was exceptional in the colonies passed unnoticed in Paris. Bédier’s medievalism transformed these geographical moves into temporal relations, much like the exposition exhibits; it brought “France” back to itself from “far away.” Bédier and his compatriots all grappled with the tension between the “negative” value of the colonial and the “positive” value of the medieval. The disconnection between creole experience and the metropolitan imagination could be measured at the exposition, where anyone like Bédier with memories of traveling across the Mediterranean Sea might have felt alienated rather than persuaded by the Maréorama or the Panorama Transatlantique. At the same time, colonial experience and medieval studies connected Bédier intimately to the foundations of republican France. Creole medievalism mapped a privileged path to national belonging, doubled by a sense of estrangement. 1931, Colonial Medievalism

Medievalism and colonialism remained vital to republican discourse in the decades following 1900. If anything, the war of 1914–18 increased their intensity: active hostilities with Germany made Frankish identity newly pertinent (tellingly, Roland figured prominently in public culture on both sides of the Rhine); the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France marked the end of continental “colonization”; Germany’s loss of its colonies after the war made colonialism an even more powerful sign of France’s supremacy. The Exposition Coloniale Internationale held in the Bois de Vincennes in 1931 conjoined colonialism to medievalism by consistently proclaiming the ancient origins of France’s expansionist success. The exposition also

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witnessed a concerted Réunionnais effort to secure an influential place in imperial politics by highlighting the island’s faithfulness to historic French traditions. This cultural strategy included a claim on medievalism through Bédier, who had become a figure of substantial international fame. Prospects for metropolitan recognition of Réunionnais aspirations for imperial privilege seemed improved with the shift in colonial ideology from “assimilation” to “association.” Assimilation assumed that colonial subjects were fundamentally different from French citizens and then demanded that they “evolve” toward French culture. By contrast, association (theoretically) respected cultural differences and did not demand change.85 Associationism, somewhat counterintuively, fostered a new discourse of “saming” (alongside conventional “othering”).86 This shift seemed to open new opportunities for Réunion, whose elites had long proclaimed their “sameness.” And yet, despite the overt claims of associationist ideology, the colonial agenda remained largely driven by economic opportunism and metropolitan superiority, such that Réunionnais arguments could not really alter the imperial outlook. The official exposition guide by André Demaison exemplifies the discourse of “saming.” Demaison “discovers” the absence of colonial difference and extols the virtues of “human solidarity.” He concludes that all imperial subjects think alike: “Today, the lifestyle of these peoples resembles your own more than you think; the ideas of other men are often your own, but expressed in a different way.”87 Demaison’s approach contrasts sharply with the dominant discourse of 1900, when commentators judged the idea of a bourgeois African ridiculous.88 His description of the famous Réunionnais creoles, moreover, casts them as ideal subjects of this newly homogeneous empire: When someone speaks to you of Bertin, Lacaussade, Parny, Leconte de Lisle, Léon Dierx, Bouvet, Lacaze, Joseph Bédier, Roland Garros and Juliette Dodu, you are tempted to believe, so much is their genius our own, that they were born in Paris or in one of our provinces.89 However, they were born over there, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, on Réunion.90 By pointing to the “invisibility” of colonial identity among these famous people, Demaison portrays their perfect performance of metropolitan cultural and racial norms; they may have had unusual geographic origins,

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but they are essentially French. Metropolitan audiences were supposed to recognize them first as national figures and only secondarily, if at all, as colonial subjects. The discourse of “saming” articulated by Demaison and others had the potential to ratify the longstanding efforts of Réunionnais elites to portray the island as France’s double. The Leblonds called the island the “Second Metropole for the French world of the Indian Ocean.”91 Other colonies, in other words, should look to Réunion as an imperial center. For the Leblonds, Réunion had achieved greater cultural unity than France itself, and they insisted that black Réunionnais farm workers spoke better French than many Bretons.92 Exposition organizer Marcel Olivier echoed Réunionnais claims when he described the island as a composite of the entire French empire, with coasts like Alger and an interior like the Massif Central.93 In the 1920s and 1930s, then, it seemed that the metropole might finally recognize Réunion’s “French” character as a source of imperial value. Despite Demaison’s laudatory discourse, his guide ultimately reinforces the traditional terms of colonial difference—exoticism and capitalism.94 Réunion’s page in fact features an “empty” graphic: a stylized palm tree and skyline. There are no people like on the other pages. The photo representing Réunion is similarly unpopulated: grouped with Somalis [Djibouti], Guadeloupe, New Caledonia, and Guyane, Réunion stands out as the only colony not represented by “colorful” local people. Instead, its photo portrays the coastline railroad, a mass of cliff on one side and an empty sky on the other (Figure 15).95 The guide thus illustrates Réunion’s tenuous purchase on metropolitan attentions: the literal inability to picture Réunion’s inhabitants suggests that even colonial propagandists had difficulty “placing” Réunion. The islanders’ own Francocentric ideals led them to erase “colorful” details that might have met metropolitan expectations for exoticism: references to Hindu and Malagasy influences were deleted from drafts of the official exhibit description; filmed scenes of Hindu festivals were not sent on to Paris; furnishings deemed “foreign” were not displayed.96 By censoring the island’s multiracial and multicultural reality, Réunionnais elites effectively wrote themselves out of the imperial narrative. Thus, despite major investments and vigorous propaganda (the Réunionnais senator Léonus Bénard considered the exposition a question of life or death for the colony),97 the exposition achieved little. Lacking (or refusing to

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Figure 15. Title page for “Somalis, Guadeloupe, Nouvelle Calédonie, Réunion, Guyane.” From André Demaison, Exposition coloniale internationale: guide officiel (Paris: Mayeux, 1931). Bibliothèque nationale de France.

acknowledge) a recognizably “ethnic” population, Réunion remained marginalized within colonialist discourse. And to the degree that it could “profit” from the ideology of “saming” articulated by Demaison, it could only lose. The architecture of Réunion’s pavilion materialized the island’s precarious status in the empire. For the organizers, the building’s neoclassical style insinuated an aristocratic pedigree that mirrored the genealogical

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Figure 16. Réunion pavilion, Exposition Coloniale, 1931. From Plus beau voyage à travers le monde, 1931. General Research and Reference Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

claims of the white creole elite (Figure 16). The pavilion drew inspiration from two of the island’s most exceptional nineteenth-century buildings, the Villa du Chaudron (Figure 17) and the Château Morange (Figure 18), both partly inspired by the eighteenth-century neoclassical style of the Petit Trianon at Versailles.98 Both of these buildings represented the island’s wealthiest landowners — those most likely to claim descent from families who frequented Versailles. Réunionnais organizers selected this design (Figure 19) to maximize the island’s associations with prestigious national history, rejecting (among others) a “typical” creole house and a modern deco-style building (Figure 20).99 The pavilion, in other words, claimed metropolitan legacies as indigenous by using models unique to Réunion that nonetheless derived from recognizable French forms. At the same time, organizers maintained Réunion’s difference from the metropole by rejecting the contemporary fashion of deco. The pavilion thus distinguished Réunion from both the metropole (by referring to history) and from other colonies (by referring to France). While the building’s aristocratic allure pleased some, its obvious Frenchness contrasted sharply with the exposition’s official program for colonial

Figure 17. Villa du Chaudron, La Réunion. Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de La Réunion, Pré-inventaire de Saint-Aubin, 1976.

Figure 18. Château Morange, La Réunion. Photograph by Jacques Mossot, March 2008. http://www.structurae.de. Used with permission.

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Figure 19. Proposal (accepted) for Réunion pavilion, Exposition Coloniale, 1931. Archives départementales de La Réunion, 8M99. All rights reserved.

architecture, which demanded historical reconstruction as well as cultural exoticism.100 Although Réunion escaped the criticism leveled against the modern designs adopted for Martinique and Guadeloupe (Lyautey complained especially about Guadeloupe’s lighthouse, which “interrupted” the view of Angkor Wat), some visitors expressed disappointment at the pavilion’s lack of exoticism.101 Organizer Olivier strove to reclaim the Réunion pavilion’s “colonial” identity by emphasizing the few “exotic” elements he could discern—namely, furniture made from tropical woods and the shallow water basin in front.102 Contrasted with the immense reconstruction of Angkor Wat just down the alley (Figure 21), however, Réunion’s “exotic” details seem minor enough to have barely registered. In the shadow of Angkor Wat, the very elements meant to signal the pavilion’s prestige diminished its impact. While the architectural and racial politics of colonial ideology sidelined Réunion, its claims on national tradition fit perfectly with France’s historical mythologies. And Bédier, quite prominently, provided a creole source for the colonialist medievalism on display throughout the exposition. In addition to the renown of his scholarship in academic circles,

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Figure 20. Proposal (unrealized) for Réunion pavilion, Exposition Coloniale, 1931. Attributed to Jean Montariol. Gouache and graphite on paper, 19 x 24⅞ inches (48.3 x 63.2 cm). The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida; The Mitchell Wolfson Jr. Collection, TD1992.25.3. Photograph by Silvia Ros.

Tristan et Iseut (1900) had made him almost a household name as a novelist; his propaganda writings during the war of 1914–18, moreover, made him an exemplary patriot. Elected to the Académie Française in 1920, he was undoubtedly the most famous living creole; during the exposition, he presided quite publicly over the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Collège de France. Not surprisingly, Réunionnais organizers capitalized on Bédier’s reputation (they had already done so at expositions in Marseille in 1922 and Saint-Denis in 1925).103 On the wall of the pavilion’s spacious verandah, Bédier’s name appeared in gold letters (along with nearly twenty other famous creoles, including Parny, Leconte de Lisle, Dierx, Dodu, De Mahy, Garros, and Lacaze).104 Inside the pavilion, the exhibit included copies of Bédier’s prize-winning school essays from Saint-Denis; images of his family home appeared in the accompanying propaganda film shown during and after the exposition.105 Guides to the exposition routinely cite Bédier’s name as one of the reasons to visit the pavilion; the Leblonds exalt his name as “shining in pure glory throughout the universe.”106 By promoting Bédier’s creole identity (alongside other

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Figure 21. Angkor Wat, Exposition Coloniale, 1931. Albert Harlingue / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works.

nationally recognized figures), Réunionnais organizers aimed to claim a privileged place within the empire. Bédier’s name brought to Réunion the national prestige of medievalism. Throughout the exposition, the Middle Ages served as a legitimizing precedent for the modern empire. Bédier thus made Réunion the sole colonial guardian of France’s most exalted imperial origins. Since Réunion itself harbored no ancient histories, its elites claimed France’s as their own. In the French exhibits, the Middle Ages initiated France’s esprit colonisateur— first expressed in the “epic” endeavor of the Crusades in the eleventh century. The pavilion of the Missions Catholiques, for example, included an elaborate “Salle de l’Epopée” [Exhibit of the Epic] illustrating global evangelization from the first through the nineteenth centuries. The “missionary epic” reached its apogee with the French Crusades, figured by a “colossal” knight in saintly form.107 Other European powers showcased their own lengthy colonial histories by constructing pavilions with the façades of medieval castles.108 The exposition’s medieval imperialism extended to the colonies themselves, most elaborately with the

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reconstruction of Angkor Wat — “restored” from the surviving ruins to an image of “original” grandeur. This project showcased French archaeological expertise, more than Khmer culture. France thereby took possession not only of its own Middle Ages but of global history. Frequent comparisons between Angkor Wat and Notre Dame (each monument was visible from the towers of the other) illustrate the ease with which colonial and medieval legacies joined forces to serve imperial nationalism.109 The newly constructed Musée des Colonies (a building that still stands) inscribed the exhibition’s colonial medievalism in monumental form on its façade. The bas-reliefs of metropolitan France that surround the front entrance doors represent Bordeaux and Marseille with fortified castles, medieval churches, and the names of medieval saints. Around the corner, Réunion appears in a small corner, its iconography subsumed by the more obviously exotic traits of Madagascar (Figure 22).110 Further along the same side of the building, medievalism returns with a lengthy list of French colonizers that begins with eight medieval entries (Figure 23). Above the names, an inscription reads: “A ses fils qui ont étendu l’empire de son génie et fait aimer son nom au-delà des mers, la France reconnaissante” [To its sons who have extended the empire of its genius and made its name loved across the seas, a grateful France]. This colonial monument echoes the Panthéon at the center of Paris, inscribed “Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante” [To the great men, a grateful country]. Olivier in fact refers to the museum as the “Pantheon of colonial France.”111 The building façade thus declared the unity of colonial and national history, granting the Middle Ages foundational force while simultaneously ennobling modern colonialism by associating it with holy heroism.112 Colonialism, rather than any particular political regime (like the monarchy or the republic), provides the basis for a continuous and prestigious national history. In this view, France and its empire emerged simultaneously and have always functioned as one. Inside the museum, the Salle des Croisades [Crusades Exhibit] reinforced the façade’s medieval colonialism. Saint Louis appeared as the “first French colonizer,” and the sword of Godefroy de Bouillon (the first name on the façade list) was displayed as a sign of France’s heroic conquest of the Holy Land. Other items included a basin used by Hughes de Lusignan (also named on the façade), a model of the Krak des Chevaliers in Syria, photos of other eastern crusader castles, reproductions of twelfth-century statues from the Church of Nazareth — and an oliphant “de fabrication

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Figure 22. Réunion, bas-relief on the Musée des Colonies (now the Palais de Porte Dorée), built for the Exposition Coloniale, 1931. Photograph by the author, November 2007.

sarrazine” from the Musée de Rouen.113 This “Saracen” oliphant apeared to arrive in France as the result of crusade conquest; it marked the beginning of the imperial practice of ethnographic collecting (prominently featured throughout the museum). Since by now French citizens knew Roland as an inspiration for the Crusades, the oliphant also reminded visitors of the patriotic lessons of epic nationalism. In the wake of Bédier’s popular edition of Roland (1922), dedicated to “Bourbon,” the oliphant from Rouen symbolized both the creole origins of Bédier’s medievalism and the medieval origins of the French empire. The Crusades exhibit demonstrated that France had always had “l’esprit colonial” [the colonial mindset]. According to Pierre Deloncle, medieval colonialism was humanistic rather than oppressive, just like modern colonialism. He cites an example that underscores the durability of medieval colonial legacies: Arabs continued, he asserts, to characterize elegant and noble gestures as “franque” [Frankish, or French].114 In a volume of historical essays commemorating the exposition, Paul Deschamps also defines the Crusades as a formative national moment, attributing the very idea of

Figure 23. Crusader names, Musée des Colonies (now the Palais de la Porte Dorée), built for the Exposition Coloniale, 1931. Photograph by the author, November 2007.

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crusade to French kings and French popes. According to him, the imperial nation immediately became a universal source of culture: “France is the oven that bakes the intellectual bread of humanity; France has created for all peoples.”115 Deschamps and Deloncle both articulate an imperial vision of France’s medieval origins, one given visible form in the museum’s exhibits. In the 1930s, Bédier also attributed France’s origins to its first colonial gestures: The eleventh century! It’s the one in which France expands (essaimer) for the first time and founds durable establishments in southern Italy and in Sicily, then in Portugal, then in England.116 Through the potent metaphor of swarming bees (essaimer), Bédier portrays France’s natural and defining propensity for territorial expansion.117 He goes even further than Deschamps and extends French universalism into history: “Can we also say that [France] has created for all times, and particularly for the ones in which we live?”118 With this explicit reference to contemporary imperialist ideals, Bédier forges inextricable links between medievalism and colonial ideology. Indeed, given his established connections with the organizers of the museum exhibits —who included the Leblonds as well as Lyautey and Gabriel Hanotaux (Bédier’s colleagues at the Académie Française) — Bédier’s medievalism may even have shaped some of the public discourse around French colonial history during the 1920s and 1930s. While the Crusades exhibit implicates Bédier’s medievalism in republican colonialism, the museum’s portrayals of Réunion embedded his creole identity within a narrative of imperial privilege. As the retrospective moved beyond the Middle Ages, it featured a number of images related to Réunion, including paintings of landscapes and daily life, portraits of the famous creole poets (Parny and Leconte de Lisle), and a diorama of the abolition of slavery in 1848; similar images (portraits of Parny, Bertin, and Leconte de Lisle) appeared in the Section de Synthèse.119 These exhibits, like those in the Réunion pavilion, insinuated Réunion into an established national history; its “surprisingly” creole poets (so often associated with Bédier in exposition guides) stood apart from the “racial ethnography” presented in the Section de Synthèse. Réunion’s special contributions to national culture also appeared in the exhibit illustrating colonial influences on France. Organized by the

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Leblonds, the exhibit featured materials related to Paul et Virginie; it included paintings, engravings, household items, and over two hundred editions of the famous eighteenth-century novel.120 In claiming the popular novel as their own (as they had in 1889), Réunionnais elites cast themselves as the guardians of colonial culture for metropolitan audiences. For his part, Bédier claimed a personal connection to the novel’s origin: according to his father, the models for the novel’s protagonists were Bédier’s distant uncle (Paul Thuault de Villarmoy) and cousin (Virginie Caillot). From the perspective of creole medievalism, moreover, Paul et Virginie looks something like a colonial Tristan et Iseut—a story of tragic love transited across the seas (see chapter 4). The exhibit, in other words, placed Bédier’s personal and family histories within a larger vision of national imperialism, one that repeatedly looped back to medieval legacies. The museum, and the exposition as a whole, conjoined the empire to France’s primordial identity. They encouraged visitors to see the nation as an empire at heart—and to see the empire as the heart of the nation. This vision rested partly on an imperial interpretation of the Crusades. The 1931 exposition’s concise collocation of medieval and colonial memories promised to sustain Réunionnais claims to a privileged place in the imperial Republic. The Leblonds explicitly tied the “genius” of French imperialism to its dual debt to the medieval and the republican: “the spiritualism of our Middle Ages was enriched by the tragic lesson of our Revolutions.”121 The national use of the “positive” valences of both medievalism and colonialism coincided with Réunionnais’ own use of medievalism (through Bédier) to distance the island from more recently acquired colonies. Within this ideological fantasy, creole medievalism represented a uniquely privileged form of national belonging. In the end, though, the pragmatics of the imperial economy and persistent desires for exotic “otherness” overrode the ideals on display at the exposition. A significant gap remained between metropolitan and Réunionnais views of the island’s place in the empire. 1937, Modern Medievalism

Not long after the colonial exposition, a new international exposition opened in the center of Paris. In the intervening years, economic and political pressures in France (and throughout the world) had increased, and the use of medievalism and colonialism in republican discourse changed signifi-

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cantly. The exposition’s subtitle, “Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne” [Arts and Technologies in Modern Life], captured the official rejection of the medievalism that had characterized previous expositions. In place of nostalgia for past glories, organizers promoted modernity and future development. The Guide officiel, for example, proclaimed confidently: “This world that we imagine as old has only the age of those who live in it.”122 The guide’s cover symbolized this view with a “modernized” Fluctuat nec mergitur seal — a ship atop a globe, no crown or medieval walls in sight (Figure 24). The image, replicated throughout the exposition,123 encapsulated organizers’ efforts to excise history from representations of collective identity — whether provincial, colonial, or national. In reality, though, historical references, including medieval ones, appeared throughout the exposition.124 This tension between official claims and actual practice demonstrated the longstanding dualism of republican medievalism: the 1937 exposition displayed the medieval in positive and negative terms simultaneously. The colonies also appeared in double fashion, as both valuable sources of national diversity and irremediably distant from French culture. National concerns about the homogenizing effects of global industrialization led organizers to promote regional cultures —both colonial and provincial — as essential to France’s distinctive identity.125 While this approach (like associationism) implied parity between continental and overseas regions, it also retrenched metropolitan demands for colonial “difference” (leaving largely untouched the ethnography of authenticity established in 1889). In this environment, Réunionnais characterizations of their island as a “second France” signaled failure rather than achievement: their appeals to tradition marked their lack of “modernity.” Bédier’s creole medievalism captured these tensions: featured at the Réunionnais pavilion as an icon of creole culture, he hardly represented “authentic diversity” not otherwise available in the metropole; as a popular translator, however, he exemplified a “modern” medievalism that distinguished French culture from other European traditions. Organizers promoted a unified yet diverse imperial culture by applying the concept of “modern regionalism” to both provinces and colonies.126 According to Edmond Labbé, each region was to represent itself through a distinctive style, visible in architecture, costume, and crafts. Pavilions featured stylized versions of typical architectural features, but no historical

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Figure 24. Modernized Fluctuat nec mergitur, Exposition Internationale, 1937. Cover, Exposition Internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937: le guide officiel (Paris: Société pour le Développement du Tourisme, 1937).

reconstructions (in contrast with 1900).127 Within the pavilions, artisans produced crafts for everyday use as well as for art.128 Organizers claimed scrupulous respect for individuality and local tradition (even if in practice they directed and exploited provincial and colonial workers alike).129 These “commodified” traditions were meant to attract tourists and bolster the

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economy.130 Harmonious diversity, moreover, was expected to strengthen national unity.131 Indeed, the entire empire would labor in a unified brotherhood, from Boulogne and Brest to Niamey (Niger) and Papeete (Tahiti):“All these black and yellow peoples, without losing any of their own originality, brought under France’s protection or governance, became one in the hands of France.”132 By protecting (and often, creating) traditional differences in outlying regions, organizers aimed to safeguard France’s unique character. “Modern regionalism” structured the entire exposition. On the left bank of the Seine, the Centre Régional presented “typical” buildings from over thirty different metropolitan regions. Elsewhere, the Centre Rural offered demonstrations of the techniques and architecture of modern farming; L’Habitation Rurale illustrated different types of modern rural housing; the Cité des Métiers et de l’Artisanat included twenty-two houses, each illustrating the lifestyle and production methods of a different trade; the Palais de l’Artisanat, a modernist building, contained further craft exhibits.133 All of these exhibits were intended to prove that France could modernize without losing its traditional identity.134 Finally, just across the bridge from the Centre Régional, on the Ile des Cygnes in the midst of the Seine, the Centre des Colonies featured sixteen pavilions that mixed modern architecture with traditional artisanry and tourist propaganda.135 Here, a “decorative silhouette” inspired by Angkor Wat marked a dramatic contrast with the “archeological reconstruction” of 1931:136 translating “modern regionalism” for Indochina, the purely decorative tower referred to the past but did not replicate it, suggesting that even colonial cultures could modernize. Overall, the colonial section appeared as the “prolongement” of the regional, and the “overseas provinces” naturally extended the metropolitan ones.137 Meanwhile, the regional section strove to match the colorful image of the colonial exhibit.138 For Réunion, whose politicians had argued since the Revolution that the colony should become a department, modern regionalism ratified a longstanding sense of closeness to the metropole. The discourse of imperial unity and equality, however, undermined Réunionnais claims for special treatment as France’s most faithful twin. Within modern regionalism, similarity meant that a regional culture had succumbed to imitation. For Réunionnais elites, what looked like imitation to Parisian observers meant “authentic” preservation of “indigenous” French culture. Réunion’s pavilion captured these dilemmas. On the one hand, it responded perfectly to the ideals of regional architecture: it was designed

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Figure 25. Réunion pavilion, Exposition Internationale, 1937. From Livre d’or officiel de l’Exposition Internationale des arts et techniques de la vie moderne, Paris, 1937 (Ministère de Commerce et de l’Industrie), 220. The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida; The Mitchell Wolfson Jr. Collection, 83.2.16. Photograph by Silvia Ros. Original photograph by Philippe Halsman; copyright Halsman Archive.

like all the others through a centralized process and modeled on a “typical” creole house (rather than on historic monuments, like in 1931). Observers concluded that it blended tradition and modernity into a distinctive form adapted to its tropical milieu (Figure 25, Figure 26).139 On the other hand, Labbé felt that the pavilion would only appeal to creoles, rather than granting it national significance like other regions.140 The pavilion’s lack of general interest suggests that, for Labbé, Réunion had not achieved the “modernity” that defined national belonging. To the degree that the pavilion did fulfill metropolitan expectations, it could also have alienated the creoles who reportedly came in large numbers: it lacked the one element truly typical of island architecture, the varangue (verandah) (Figure 27). In creating “typical” regional architecture, in other words, the metropolitan planners suppressed the region’s most recognizable architectural feature (given grandiose form in 1931). The pavil-

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Figure 26. Réunion pavilion (back), Exposition Internationale, 1937. From Album officiel, Exposition Internationale des arts et des techniques appliqués à la vie moderne, Paris, 1937 (Paris: La Photolith, 1937). Bibliothèque nationale de France.

ion that signaled Réunion’s integration into the national project of modern regionalism thus also alienated its own “natives” from their homeland and the nation itself. Although some metropolitans considered creoles perfectly at home at the pavilion, and Réunionnais organizers had jealously guarded their right to an individual pavilion, they could not secure the visibility they craved.141 The pavilion housed an exhibit much like the one presented in 1931, showcasing nationally recognized creoles — the canonical poets (Parny, Leconte de Lisle, Dierx) and the medievalist, Bédier; the installation also highlighted the national achievements of politicians (De Mahy, the Brunets) and writers (the Leblonds, Jean D’Esme).142 These names illustrated the depth of “l’inspiration Réunionnaise,” figured in an allegorical statue in white marble at the entrance. The exhibit represented Réunion’s value by emphasizing its faithful adherence to mainstream national culture. Bédier in particular connected Réunion to France’s most distant origins through medieval studies. In 1937, however, arguments from history had no place in official discourse.

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Figure 27. Typical “creole” house. From A. G. Garsault, Notice sur la Réunion (Paris: Librairie africaine et coloniale, 1900), figure IX.

The famous creoles could not take the place of the one figure deemed essential for a nationally significant regional identity—the artisan. Unlike every other regional and colonial pavilion, Réunion had no live demonstrations or unique handcrafts.143 Indeed, Labbé remarked that Réunion had no obvious place in a program devoted to modern arts and technologies since it lacked indigenous arts and supported only agriculture and poets (however accomplished).144 With only a few handcrafted products, and those devoid of “local color,” Réunion had nothing to contribute to the imperial craft industry. Since the immigrants who brought artisanal skills to the island had since lost them, Labbé suggested that the government foster local schools whose best students could be sent to Paris for advanced training. In this way, the “creole hand” could soon achieve the same perfection as the “creole mind.”145 Labbé’s prescription for Réunion echoes his directive approach (artisanat dirigé) to metropolitan regional arts, where officials corrected and even invented local arts.146 The “local color” that authenticated regional crafts entailed both stylistic and racial standards. In the ethnography of regionalism, a single identifiable people inhabited each region, producing

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crafts that expressed their unique culture. For an immigrant society like Réunion, this approach meant that handcrafts produced on the island belonged ethnographically to the homelands of their producers, however distant in time or location. Réunionnais lace, for example, lacked “local color” because it preserved the regional style of immigrants from Brittany, Normandy, and other French provinces. For Réunionnais elites, this faithfulness to French traditions signified their special status in the empire; for metropolitan officials, however, it signified a lack of regional identity. The lace industry illustrates well the miscalculations of creole identity politics. On the one hand, Marius Leblond, as an exposition commissioner, perfectly anticipated Labbé’s criticism, recommending in 1935 that Réunion’s government organize schools for producing lace based on original motifs (such as ferns and lychees); he admired and envied the distinctive styles he had seen in Martinique.147 On the other hand, Leblond attributed Réunion’s potential for success to its more substantial white and assimilated population. Promoting this Eurocentric standard could not meet the criteria of modern regionalism. Réunionnais thus perpetuated their own marginality by insisting on their fundamentally French identity. As Eurocentric Europeans from the southern hemisphere, white creoles had little to offer to metropolitan fantasies of the tropics.148 In designing their exhibit, Réunionnais organizers refused to engage one of the island’s most obvious regional distinctions—its exceptionally high percentage of mixed-race, or métis, inhabitants. Colonial officials had long recognized métissage as a desirable means of assimilating “inferior” races (an idea that had coexisted with virulent resistance to métissage since around 1880).149 From the perspective of modern regionalism, racial diversity (like craft production) strengthened the nation, compensating for falling European birth rates and curing economic stagnation.150 Exposition organizers manifested their interest in métissage by organizing a beauty contest for Miss France d’Outre-Mer, otherwise known as the Concours du Meilleur Mariage Colonial (Contest for the Best Colonial Marriage). Réunion’s participation reveals the refusal of creole elites to identify with the colonial ethnography valued in the metropole: contest participants were all the children of French fathers and African or Asian mothers—“with the exception of one of them, an admirable creole of white race from Réunion, and who, for this reason, knows she is out of the running.”151 As a self-proclaimed pure European, Miss Réunion (daughter of the island’s senator, Léonus Bénard) embodied the racial and cultural ideals

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of elite creole society. And yet, by selecting her, Réunionnais organizers literally disqualified themselves. Although they could have easily found a beautiful métisse, they preferred to mark their difference from other colonies and emphasize their identification with the metropole (where Miss Bénard could have participated without scandal in the parallel contest for Miss France). The dictates of colonial ethnography, moreover, would probably have classified a métisse as either “African” or “Asian” (according to her ancestral roots), once again disqualifying Miss Réunion. Miss Bénard’s destiny lay outside the colonial circuit: rather than returning to daily chores in her homeland, she lived in Paris with her father the senator (in fact, several of the contestants lived in Paris).152 In a reversal of Miss Bénard’s official exclusion, she appears triumphant in the contest’s commemorative photo (Figure 28). Front and center, her wide white skirt spread across the other women’s feet, she alone holds a flag and a cascade of tropical flowers. This “white rose in a colored rosebush,” as the caption reads, presides as the winner in a photo that translates Réunionnais aspirations to prevail over other colonies in the contest for France’s privileged attentions. The difference between the photo and the contest outcome mirrors the difference between the self-image of Réunion’s elites and the island’s actual place in the imperial economy. The conflict surrounding the beauty contest parallels the dissonance between official approaches to history and actual practices. Even as organizers endeavored to shift the terms of national belonging, history remained a vibrant factor— and medievalism and colonialism as intertwined as in 1889. While the modernized Fluctuat emblem appeared on the official guide, for example, other official materials, including entrance tickets and souvenir albums, as well as the façade of the Palais de l’Artisanat, featured the traditional version—complete with crenellated medieval towers.153 The official use of both a medievalizing and modernizing Fluctuat emblem reveals the dualism of Labbé’s own official pronouncements. He dismissed “passéisme” while also drafting the Middle Ages into the fight against industrial modernity, tying the term métier— a key concept for the craft politics of modern regionalism — to the Middle Ages: With this word métier, memories surface: artisans of the Middle Ages, guilds of the Ancien Régime! At the Center for Trades [Métiers], is it not old France that reflected and extended itself into our contemporary life, thanks to Progress?154

Figure 28. Contestants for Miss France d’Outre-mer, Exposition Internationale, 1937. From L’Illustration, 7 August 1937.

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The Middle Ages here facilitates France’s liberation from a national identity crisis. In the pleasant surroundings of the Centre des Métiers —a new urbanism based on the small streets of “old towns” —artisans could escape the horrors shown in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1927, emblem of the soul-crushing effects of the machine age).155 Tradesmen embody what turns out to be modernity’s still-indispensable notion of history. Official publications regularly presented similarly favorable attitudes toward history. The Guide officiel opens with praise for the artisan as the embodiment of historical memories: These first gestures of the primitive individual, which are the source of everything, have not disappeared with them. Each generation has transmitted them to the next generation while perfecting them. They have become today the subtle heritage buried in the agile fingers of the artisans who, in the organizers of the Exposition, have found ardent protectors whose ambition is precisely to desire the reconciliation of that which we supposed capable of killing everything and that which must not die.156 Here, “primitive” encompasses all times and places — from the national past to the imperial present. The hands of living workers (metropolitan and colonial alike) express ancient ethnic memories, protected now by modern French politicians. The artisan becomes the instrument by which politicians craft a modernity (“capable of killing everything”) that champions tradition (“that which must not die”). At the same time, the artisan brings history into modernity, as handcrafting is portrayed as a precapitalist activity that protects France from the ugly effects of mass production.157 While the Guide officiel remains vague about the exact historical location of this “primitive individual,” the Livre d’or links colonial artisanry specifically to the Middle Ages, comparing the organization of North African craftsmen to the guilds of “our Middle Ages.”158 The medieval thus lives on in the colonies, and also in the traditional crafts of France itself. Numerous “modernizing” exhibits also integrated visible historical lessons. Alongside the mechanized farm of the Centre Rural, for example, stood the museum of the Village of Romaney-en-Bresse, showcasing its pre-Roman origins.159 Together, the installations authenticated local identity by positing continuity from Gaulic to Roman to medieval to modern times. Similar retrospectives appeared alongside working artisans in several

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Figure 29. Parc d’Attractions, with medieval-themed buildings, Exposition Internationale, 1937. From Edmond Labbé, Exposition Internationale des arts et techniques, Paris, 1937, rapport général (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1938), 2: plate CXXVII. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

of the colonial pavilions.160 And some of the folklore festivals organized through the Centre Régional were performed at the Parc d’Attractions in the midst of a reconstructed Village de Notre Vieille France (Village of our Old France) (Figure 29). Here, visitors found the nostalgic architecture banned from the regional section itself, most prominently that of Bretagne, Auvergne, and Alsace. The Parc also included the colonial picturesque, with reconstructed Tunisian and Moroccan souks. The Guide officiel presented these attractions as exotic extensions of the medieval village: “they add to this reconstitution of Old France a brilliant exotic note, evocative of our overseas empire.”161 In the Parc, then, regional folklore coexisted with colonial exoticism and medieval nostalgia. Indeed, the Parc was marketed as an amalgamation of past, present, and future, its entrance framed by medieval-looking towers and a steel roller coaster (Figure 30). The Parc suggested that France’s authentic future rested on a modernity that

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Figure 30. Parc d’Attractions, entrance, Exposition Internationale, 1937 (postcard). Private collection of Claude Boissy. Used with permission.

nonetheless remembered its past—a “nostalgic” or “medieval” modernism to accompany the vogue of technological futurism.162 Labbé may have opposed the Parc,163 but its popularity made it integral to the exposition’s message. The lessons of history also played an important role in the institutions of the new Palais de Chaillot. Although designed to “modernize” the Trocadéro building (1878) that it replaced, the Palais actually maintained the early republic’s dual commitment to medievalism and colonialism. As James Herbert has shown, the Musée des Monuments Français and Musée de l’Homme represented, respectively, the “precapitalist feudal era” and the “extracapitalist primitive world” as defenses against industrial homogenization. The Musée des Monuments Français (like the Musée de Sculpture Comparée that preceded it) aimed specifically to inspire national pride through the admiration of medieval arts. During the exposition itself, the Palais housed a basement exhibit, originating mostly from the provinces, illustrating the latest techniques for conserving historical monuments.164 The exhibit demonstrated that the Middle Ages benefited as much from modernity as craft production did. The display included the Krak des Chevaliers from Syria (a monument to

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medieval colonialism that was also featured at the Musée des Colonies in 1931) and maps of twelfth-century pilgrimage routes (central to Bédier’s famous thesis on the origins of the epic).165 Even in this small exhibit, the medieval, regional, colonial, and modern converged to teach mutually reinforcing lessons. Even at the new Musée d’Art Moderne, history occupied a substantial place during the exposition, with a retrospective exhibit reaching back to the ninth century. Conceived late in the planning process by leaders of the leftist Popular Front, the retrospective underscored artistic continuity, much like the craft and folklore exhibits.166 Prime Minister Léon Blum wrote in the preface to the catalogue that the exhibit attested to the “continuous creation” and “eternal prestige” of French art.167 Labbé ascribed to the same theory of artistic continuity, despite his resistance to the retrospective itself. Historical art could rejuvenate national culture, much like authentic regional traditions: “a glance at the past, far from diminishing the present, would reveal the deep sources of contemporary art, from which it draws constant forces of renewal.”168 In fact, the retrospective exhibit forged direct connections between regionalism and historicism (including medievalism) because nearly all of the items displayed came from provincial museums. This logistical necessity ended up furthering the goals of modern regionalism. The most leftist government of the Third Republic, in other words, took up the same representational strategies as its more conservative predecessors. Medieval artifacts at the retrospective included several carved oliphants, among them the ever-popular “horn of Roland” from Toulouse.169 Oliphants signaled in shorthand the broader continuity of republican medievalism. Like the oliphants of 1889, 1900, and 1931, those of 1937 referenced national patriotism, imperial prestige, and creole memories (for Bédier, but also for anyone familiar with him, his Roland translation, or the Musée des Colonies). Drawn from provincial collections, they now also referenced the ideals of modern regionalism. Against this background, Bédier’s Roland (republished in 1937) becomes the historical counterpart to the “regional novel”— a stylized construction that modernized an inherited tradition rather than only recovering it archeologically. Bédier’s Tristan et Iseut fits this paradigm even more directly: it takes a regionally specific tradition (Celtic Breton) and renders it fully French; it takes historic fragments and makes them coherently modern (see chapter 4).

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Bédier claimed the past for the modern nation in terms very similar to Labbé’s. In Labbé’s modernity, experts authenticated national traditions; in Bédier’s Middle Ages, experts (clerics) created foundational literary monuments. In both cases, specialists mediated relations between local identities and national culture, protecting France from outside influences. Bédier’s views of medieval history may have influenced the art retrospective, for he had long been associated with Blum through common friends, and the two met for dinner at least once during the planning period.170 Regardless of Bédier’s involvement, the general resonances between his medievalism and Labbé’s regionalism suggest once again that creole medievalism coincided with many aspects of republican discourse—and that creole identity belonged both to the margins and the center of imperial France. Bédier’s creole medievalism seemed ideally suited for placing Réunion at the center of the empire. With the colonial portrayed as much like the regional, and the regional so central to the forms of national belonging advocated by exposition organizers, Réunion would seem to have easily found a comfortable place in the metropolitan imaginary. Modern regionalism, theoretically, encompassed the key terms of Réunionnais aspirations: it recognized overseas regions as equal to continental provinces and valued regions as repositories of authentic historical traditions. And yet Réunion’s cultural particularities had even less purchase on metropolitan value than they did in 1931. In 1937, metropolitan terms of national belonging depended on mass consumption (if not mass production) and the commodification of the indigenous. And Réunion did not meet the demands of what Robert Rydell has called the “colonial modern.”171 The effort to make distant things “present” ultimately functioned more convincingly when distance also marked difference. Both too far and too close, Réunion fell outside the bounds of simulated cultural fantasy. The Paris expositions that spanned Bédier’s lifetime consistently forged significant relations among medievalism, colonialism, and republican France. They presented lessons of collective identification in popular and entertaining forms, aiming to instill patriotism in French citizens and admiration in foreigners. Bédier’s engagement with both the academic and popular dimensions of republican medievalism (from his scholarship to his translations to his portrayal at the expositions) placed him at the center of some of the most visible and influential representations of France— conceived as an entity with a long history and a broad geographic reach.

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Bédier gave imperial France prestigious medieval origins; he offered this same valuable lineage to Réunionnais elites dreaming of national recognition. While these representations shaped desirable images of national belonging for Bédier’s homelands, they ultimately thwarted Réunionnais aspirations for privileged status in the empire. Réunion could not meet metropolitan expectations of colonial exoticism and economic productivity. The complexities of Réunion’s place in the empire define the complexities of the creole diaspora, which in turn shaped much of Bédier’s social, political, and scholarly life.

· CHAPTER 3 ·

Between Paris and Saint-Denis

T

hroughout the Third Republic, colonialism and medievalism together shaped images of France as an ancient imperial nation. Bédier’s popular scholarship, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, actively elaborated on this image, which was repeatedly appropriated by political interests from the far left to the far right. Bédier himself entertained connections across the political spectrum, appearing simultaneously “revolutionary” and “conservative.”1 These contradictions have led most commentators to resist characterizing Bédier as nationalist.2 The difficulty, however, lies neither in condemning nor exonerating Bédier but rather in developing a definition of nationalism adapted to his circumstances. I argue here that creole republicanism, as practiced by Bédier’s family (cousin De Mahy and stepfather Du Tertre) frames Bédier’s medievalism. From the perspective of Réunion, his seemingly contradictory affiliations all support a coherent portrayal of France as both unified and ancient. In order to explain the impacts of creole culture, I develop in this chapter three dimensions of Bédier’s biography: political, cultural, and autobiographical. His consistent engagement with Réunion decenters “nationalism” and dislocates the “Middle Ages.” Bédier accumulated an astonishing array of prominent friends and acquaintances through the combined contacts afforded by fellow creoles, classmates from the École Normale Supérieure, and colleagues at the Collège de France and the Académie Française. His active social contacts included patrons of the arts, cultural critics, military officers, ambassadors, and politicians (among them several presidents).3 He sympathized with both Alfred Dreyfus (the Jewish officer condemned by the state) and Jean Jaurès (the controversial socialist) while attracting praise from Catholic royalists like Charles Maurras. Clearly, Bédier does not fit easily within the standard paradigms of “left” and “right,” even considering their complex permutations during the Third Republic. And he did not simply move

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from left to right (from defending Dreyfus to supporting Maurras), as did many early leftists (including Barrès and several of Bédier’s students).4 Rather, he practiced a particularly creole brand of republicanism that reconciles these contradictions: Bédier’s political reasoning follows the traditionalist terms of elite creole culture. Bédier received lessons in creole tradition both through his family and his colonial education. The culture of the Réunionnais elite drew inspiration from an idealized chivalry that justified a racialized definition of creole identity. Creole elitism, in other words, rests on medievalism: creole “superiority” allegedly derived from the faithful preservation of France’s oldest and best traditions. Claiming to be more chivalrously “medieval” than their continental contemporaries, creole elites asserted their aristocratic heritage in order to bring themselves closer to continental France. Bédier himself inherited this idealized medievalism as a young creole subject. He arrived on Réunion in 1870 at the age of six, just months before the fall of the Second Empire. In a very direct sense, he came of age in the formative years of creole republicanism. Once embarked on his career as a medievalist, Bédier reshaped creole medievalism into an academic practice, biographical discourse, and political philosophy that promised to alleviate the fractured place of the creole diaspora in the imperial nation. From youthful private letters to public speeches as an internationally famous member of the Académie Française and head of the Collège de France, Bédier reflected continuously on the significance of his colonial heritage. Whether speaking to Réunionnais or metropolitan audiences, on the continent or elsewhere, Bédier repeatedly portrayed his colonial origins as intimately enmeshed with his practice as a medievalist. Creole medievalism thus provides Bédier with a framework for national belonging. It is a matter of both private and public reflection that acts upon both the Middle Ages and modern France. Creole Republicans

Bédier came from a well-connected creole family. On his father’s side, he admired the legacy of his great-uncle Achille Bédier (1791–1865)—Bourbon’s first creole governor. Bédier’s father, Adolphe, lauded Achille for his devotion to Bourbon, his arguments in favor of colonizing Madagascar, and his noble disdain for bourgeois commerce.5 Bédier’s mother’s

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connections also reached deep into the creole elite. Bédier’s mother Marie-Céline Du Tertre Le Cocq, stepfather Du Tertre, and cousin De Mahy were all directly related to the island’s most powerful landowners, the Le Coat de Kervéguen family.6 This extended kinship network supported Marie-Céline and her three children after she returned to Bourbon a widow. Her remarriage in 1872 solidified family control in Saint-Denis: Du Tertre took over the hereditary office of town lawyer from her brother.7 The Du Tertres frequently hosted De Mahy when he visited Réunion; they (and the young Joseph Bédier) frequently vacationed with Hervé Le Coat de Kervéguen.8 In Paris, Bédier lived with De Mahy when he began his university studies.9 Although Bédier never held elected office or joined the colonial administration himself, he socialized in colonialist circles, enjoying a reputation for political influence (and wealth) among his fellow creoles.10 Late in life, he took on the presidency of the Alliance Française (at the urging of his compatriot Lacaze), assiduously supporting its colonialist mission to spread the French language.11 On Réunion, Du Tertre and De Mahy formed the core of a veritable political machine in the first decades of the Third Republic. De Mahy served as Réunion’s deputy from 1870 until his death in 1906, while Du Tertre was thrice mayor of Saint-Denis (1900–4, 1908–10, 1911–12) and deeply involved in local politics throughout his career (he died in 1926 at the age of 83). De Mahy defined the creole political agenda when he first took office: expel the enemy occupying Alsace-Lorraine, establish republican institutions, strengthen colonial freedoms, obtain Réunion’s political assimilation with France as a département, and promote a secular education that respected individual religious convictions.12 Du Tertre served as De Mahy’s political voice in his absence, and always campaigned with him on the island.13 Du Tertre (a lawyer) and De Mahy (a doctor) allied their interests with the landowners and industrialists. They supported stability above all, resisting both progressive republicans and clerical reactionaries (even as they frequently formed alliances with both).14 “Stability,” of course, remained an ideal rather than an achievement, as monetary crises, political corruption, and the countervailing pressures of property owners and impoverished workers combined to keep the island in turmoil.15 Du Tertre considered the forces of instability “criminal,” although he and De Mahy made their own contributions to violent and corrupt elections as they defended the elite’s traditional privileges.16 The uncommon volatility of creole republicanism

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derived largely from this explosive combination of economics, race, and religion. This pattern of conflict and contradiction continued with the second generation of creole republicans—dominated by Lucien Gasparin (deputy 1906 to 1942) and Auguste Brunet (deputy 1924 to 1942, and a pallbearer at Bédier’s funeral). De Mahy and Du Tertre initially invited Gasparin into politics as their ally to broaden their appeal to the “people”: he became the only métis elected from Réunion during the Third Republic, and soon broke with his centrist patrons.17 The next ten years saw unprecedented political volatility as traditional allegiances fell apart. Gasparin ran against Du Tertre for the mayorality of Saint-Denis in 1908; Du Tertre ran against Gasparin for deputy in 1910 (unsuccessfully and possibly dishonestly).18 Some of Du Tertre’s own enemies despised Gasparin so thoroughly that they supported Du Tertre. These fissures resulted in a number of incongruous alliances and a sequence of split elections, such that for a long period Réunion’s deputies in Paris agreed on almost nothing.19 Even the apparent stability brought by the Gasparin–Brunet alliance after 1924 relied on improbabilities—a métis lawyer of modest background and a descendent of the “old creole” tradition (who, moreover, had dueled each other in their younger days . . . with Gasparin seconded by Du Tertre’s son, Maurice).20 Both, however, consistently affirmed their patriotic devotion to Réunion.21 Their rigorously colonial perspective made for seemingly unusual alliances, both in Paris and Saint-Denis.22 As Prosper Eve concludes, political party affiliations on Réunion meant little, and certainly not what they meant in the metropole.23 Creole republicanism functioned largely as a strategy for maintaining the power of the elite, not as a philosophy of social justice or liberation from religious authority. Polemicists on the island, for example, accused De Mahy of both propagating socialism and joining the extreme right.24 Meanwhile, the Leblonds could embrace socialism as a form a national defense—and characterize the Revolution a “pacific and liberating imperialism.”25 In an earlier period, Bédier’s father argued that many nineteenthcentury royalists were in fact the only sincere republicans.26 These seemingly incongruous positions share a passionate patriotism. Réunionnais and metropolitan commentators alike often credit creoles with a deeper attachment to the patrie than continentals, their devotion growing in inverse proportion to their distance from Paris.27 For the Leblonds, creole patriotism

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shaped an “invisible solidarity” between Réunion and France, preserving tradition while expanding the empire.28 They specifically praised Bédier as an embodiment of these ideals. This form of creole republicanism directly supports colonial nationalism while alluding to medievalism (the ultimate source of prestigious “tradition”). Just like republican nationalism (see chapters 1 and 2), creole republicanism melds the value of distant times to distant places. Creole republicanism partly explains the actions of both De Mahy and Bédier around the Dreyfus Affair, even though they acted quite differently. De Mahy, like many politicians, favored bourgeois values over revolutionary ones: he was not on the side of the peuple during the 1871 Commune— but did vote against violent repression afterwards.29 When Dreyfus was accused of treason, De Mahy supported the army and the state (in the interests of traditional order). He then joined Barrès in the anti-Dreyfusard Ligue de la Patrie Française in 1899, becoming president of the incipient Action Française. But when Henri Vaugeois called for a violent restoration of the monarchy at the group’s inaugural lecture, and then persisted in questioning the Republic, De Mahy resigned and demanded that his name be removed from the list of adherents to both groups.30 De Mahy’s conservative and xenophobic republicanism left him, in 1900, with few political allies: he voted (in the minority) against the exoneration of Dreyfus and also resisted (unsuccessfully) the law separating church and state because it threatened the privileges of the creole elite. Bédier, by contrast, defended Dreyfus. While he was close to De Mahy, and had good relations with other anti-Dreyfusards, he supported Dreyfus from early on, and later met the captain at the salon of the Marquise Arconati-Visconti (a wealthy widow who hosted regular political discussions).31 Tellingly, Bédier turns the moral justice of the Dreyfus case into evidence of French cultural superiority in a letter to the Marquise: The lesson of morality of which you speak, France has already received it during the salutary crisis of these last years. I dare say that it has given this lesson even more than it has received it: for what other people but ours would have found so many men ready to sacrifice their life or their bread to free an innocent?32 When the law passed overturning Dreyfus’s conviction (1906), Bédier declared that he loved his country more than ever.33 He remained concerned

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with the political fallout of the Affair, writing to the Marquise in 1908 of the “odious” Action Française and the difficulties still faced by Dreyfusards.34 Throughout this period Bédier developed two seemingly contradictory lines of thought: the one virulently anti-German (endearing him to the nationalist right, including the Action Française), the other supportive of the increasingly unpopular Jaurès (solidifying his socialist leanings). Bédier’s thinking on the Affair is thus not limited to the philological or the personal.35 Instead, he participates in the development of the “intellectual” as outlined by Antoine Compagnon and others.36 Bédier resembles most Gustave Lanson, the only other “literary” Dreyfusard.37 Both argued for an essentially nationalist literary history that began in the Middle Ages; they also shared numerous personal and professional contacts (including the Marquise).38 Bédier’s connections with Dreyfusards encompass his mentors (Gaston Paris, Paul Meyer, Gabriel Monod), students (Ferdinand Lot), and close personal friends (Lucien Herr); anti-Dreyfusards included his fellow creoles (De Mahy, José-Maria de Heredia), collaborators (Ferdinand Brunetière, his cousin-through-marriage Louis Artus), later champions (Barrès, Maurras) and future colleagues at the Académie Française (Lavisse, Hanotaux, Jules Lemaître).39 Bédier, in other words, fits uneasily into the categories generally defined for intellectuals in the period. Instead, he implements a “creole” commitment to patriotic honor above all partisan interests. Bédier’s warm yet critical relationship with Jaurès further illustrates his seemingly idiosyncratic political values. He met Jaurès, like Dreyfus, at the Marquise’s salon, and came to admire him greatly: “When Jaurès speaks well of someone, I believe him at once, and I admire that person immediately.”40 Bédier even identified himself as “jauressiste” to friends of his wife’s family who had invited him to run for his father-in-law’s seat as a deputy.41 He consistently defended Jaurès, while also lamenting his involvement with the pacifists (a development that the Marquise herself could not pardon).42 Bédier even commended Jaurès’s failed attempt to legislate the end of private property, admiring the humanitarian beauty of his idealism: “I am far from constructing the future Citadel on the same design as Jaurès, but I like his speech precisely because he constructs there a different kind of Citadel.”43 As Jaurès radicalized his positions, Bédier applauded his adherence to republican values — yet disagreed with nearly every one of his actual policies:

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I do not approve of his internationalism, nor of his collectivism, nor, I think, of any of his political ideas: which means basically that I am on another side than him, in another party. But are we making this discovery today that Jaurès is a revolutionary socialist, and that he already was one twenty years ago? Didn’t we know it, and should we, at each incident of daily life, be surprised if he doesn’t act like a conservative or a radical? Is it because he dreams of the “Great Night”? Is it as a revolutionary that he is despicable? So be it. But then, it is not today that he is despicable, but for twenty years now.44 Bédier goes on to praise Jaurès’s generosity, candor, purity, and loyalty (seeing in him the ideals of the “first Revolution”). As much as Bédier detests the workers’ strikes and the unions, he cannot blame Jaurès himself, whom he casts as a “prisoner” of socialist “barbarians.”45 Discussions around the new military service law of 1913 marked the definitive end of the Marquise’s relation with Jaurès, but not Bédier’s. While the Marquise would write of Jaurès’s assassination in 1914 as a service to national defense, Bédier expressed great sadness at the death of “noble Jaurès.”46 Bédier’s effort to separate the personal from the ideological is certainly not unique (Blum took a similar approach to Barrès),47 but it emerges at least partly from creole traditions that valued personal honor above party affiliations. Bédier recognizes that there are many ways to express patriotism—but patriotism remains always fundamental. Within this frame, he articulates explicit tolerance for mutually exclusive views: But, when one is not oneself a man of action, one should abstain, to my mind, from judging men of action on each event of daily politics. . . . And then, whom of our friends will we ask to love our country with precisely the same heart as us?48 Bédier concludes that individuals can change their positions without betraying their patriotism: “the richness of national feeling” derives from the conflicts that arise from diversity. He expresses the same sentiment even after the war. Asked to comment on France’s future approach to Germany, Bédier declared his own intransigent resistance to reconciliation —but went on to clarify that his personal view was not necessarily a desirable national one:

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It is good that certain Frenchmen keep their resentments for a long time, it is good that certain others have already forgotten them. France’s attitude cannot derive from one mold, which would consist of a few short sentences, and that all would apply, like a Prussian, immediately and mechanically. It is of the infinitely diverse and complex effort of its sons, it is of the very diversity and complexity, even the contradiction, of their tendencies, that is composed the moral unity, the face, and the soul of a nation.49 For Bédier, differences among France’s citizens unify the national “soul.” France’s tolerance for diverse opinion defines its cultural superiority over Germany (a country of mechanical uniformity). Bédier’s principled commitment to honor the convictions of others parallels his belief in the separation of social spheres — “men of action” follow different rules than other men. Bédier’s defense of diversity thus rests, paradoxically, on an intolerance for mixing: it supports hierarchy rather than equality, social stasis rather than mobility. As such, Bédier’s political philosophy reveals its roots in colonial culture: honor above all, each in his proper place. Bédier extends the same accepting tolerance to the conservative right as he does to Jaurès. Indeed, Léon Daudet, a former classmate of Bédier’s and ardent supporter of the Action Française, believed that Bédier was a socialist — and reports surprise that Bédier commented one day: “Love of our country makes us close, you and me.”50 Bédier’s fundamental nationalism made him an easy ally for a range of right-leaning thinkers—including Barrès, one of the most influential founders of the Action Française. The two became friends at the beginning of the war,51 developing a collaboration in which Barrès frequently relied on Bédier’s advice (their weekly meetings sometimes lasted hours). Barrès had already developed a patriotic medievalism resonant with the medievalists of 1870 (see chapter 1), supporting the sanctification of Jeanne d’Arc and legislating to protect medieval cathedrals.52 In keeping with the historiographical shift opened by 1870, Barrès made the Middle Ages (and specifically the Crusades) the precursor to the Republic rather than a justification for a new monarchy.53 In dialogue with Bédier, Barrès made his medievalism explicitly epic. The opening of Barrès’s famous historical novel, La colline inspirée (1913), for example, appears to follow the list of sanctuaries enumerated in Bédier’s Les légendes épiques—anchoring questions of modern French identity in the spiritual geography of the medieval epic.54 Soon after the novel’s publication,

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Bédier began assisting Barrès directly, sometimes extensively, with several writing projects, including Les traits éternels (1916) and Les diverses familles spirituelles de la France (1917).55 In Les traits éternels, Barrès takes the epic and the Crusades as direct precedents for modern military valor: The epics, the Crusades, the whole youth of France is full of innumerable acts accomplished by our knights and by the holy people of God that precede, that prefigure the exploits executed by our armies in 1916.56 Barrès makes Bédier directly responsible for his understanding of these connections: “I will never say enough what I owe to M. Joseph Bédier, eminent master whose science and refinement helped me to understand both today’s heroic reality and the epic of the past.”57 Bédier’s influence on the historical conceptions supported by some of France’s most reactionary thinkers suggests a fundamental ideological solidarity. Bédier’s own reflections on wartime valor illustrate the symbiosis between far-right nationalism and creole medievalism. On the one hand, Bédier revised his understanding of Roland in light of his patriotic understanding of the human sacrifices of modern combat: he no longer believed (as he had claimed in the Légendes épiques) that Roland “elevated” his dead comrades with his own death: A leader is powerless, a troop is powerless, if there is not established from the leader to the troop and from the troop to the leader a double and continuous circuit of harmonious thoughts and feelings. . . . In spite of Roland, in spite of his companions, he incarnates their deepest desire. . . . At Roncevaux, his privilege as leader, as hero, as saint, is only to see beyond, to perceive immediately the work as necessarily accomplished, victory as necessarily won.58 The “circuit of harmonious feelings” between leaders and their troops draws the modern French soldier closer to Roland. Bédier seals this medieval patriotism by concluding L’effort français (1919) with Roland’s “douce France [sweet France].”59 But Bédier’s idealized medievalism began on Réunion, and L’effort français also links France’s “hereditary” honor to colonialism: he considered that only officers who had served in the colonies were really prepared for the war:

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Through the colonial officers, our soldiers reconnected with their ancestors, recognized themselves with pleasure as the grandsons and great-grandsons of disciplined soldiers; thanks to them, they rediscovered intact, faithfully preserved, their own patrimony, the repository of the warrior virtues of their race.60 For Bédier, colonial officers (among them many Réunionnais) embody the authentic national character established at the foundation of the “French race”—in the Middle Ages. Their colonial experience brought them closer to the medieval vanquishers of “infidels” and “barbarians.” Through them, metropolitan soldiers (cut off from their own inherited virtues) could recognize themselves as “grandsons of Roland.” Bédier’s vision of colonial chivalry sustains a racialist nationalism fully compatible with Barrès’s more vociferous positions. As a creole, Bédier also follows De Mahy’s own reactionary tendencies, grounding patriotic nationalism in imperial geography. Bédier’s wartime writings contributed to his election to the Académie Française in 1920, an effort initiated by Barrès (who had joined in 1906).61 Receiving Bédier at the Académie, Louis Barthou (then Minister of War) made explicit the national value of Bédier’s chivalric patriotism, praising his medieval scholarship and his wartime efforts as equally major contributions to “la gloire de la Patrie.”62 While Bédier’s election was just as appreciated on the left as on the right,63 reactionary activists claimed his legacy in especially direct ways. After Barrès died in 1923, Bédier replaced him on the Comité de Patronage of the recently founded Chronique des lettres françaises (no. 6), a billing he shared with the notorious reactionary Maurras.64 Indeed, partisans of the Action Française claimed that Bédier supported Maurras’s election to the Académie in 1937. While the moderate press quoted Bédier opposing Maurras (“there have never been polemicists under the Coupola”) and it is widely assumed that he voted against Maurras (along with Lacaze and Prévost),65 the editors of L’Action française published a letter claiming to prove the contrary (addressed to Maurras from one of Bédier’s summertime neighbors): He spoke to me of your [Maurras’s] visit and gave me the large blue pencil that you had forgotten on his table. I asked him, if the occasion presented itself, if I could tell you that he had voted for you, and he answered: of course.66

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Another partisan, Gabriel Rocher, reports that Bédier agreed to participate in a celebration for Maurras because “on the patriotic plane, I am with them . . . At least with those people, one breathes an air of patriotism.”67 Maurras’s own memory of Bédier expresses surprise at their many common ideas and friends, judging him an “admirable patriot” even though he was an old-style republican.68 Other extremists like Robert Brasillach (ardent fascist) and Bédier’s former student Hubert Bourgin (a vociferous anti-Semite) published effusive homages.69 All of these statements appeared among the flurry of remembrances that accompanied Bédier’s death, revealing perhaps more about the public contest to claim his legacy as they do about him. Nonetheless, Bédier did little if anything to attenuate his associations with conservatives and reactionaries. They form part of the continuum of contradictions that define creole republicanism. Tellingly, creole elites found the traditionalist nationalism espoused by Barrès quite appealing.70 Barrès’s justification for his own republicanism (he never repudiated the Revolution like Maurras) resonates strongly with the conservative values of creole republicanism: “I consider that one cannot excuse oneself, when one is a traditionalist, when one is subjected to the law of continuity, from taking things in the state in which one finds them.”71 This kind of traditionalism made medievalism central to French identity, validating all aspects of national history simply because they have already happened. Bédier expressed his own social views in a similarly traditionalist or “conformist” manner: “It is good, in France as elsewhere, to occupy a place in the regular hierarchy.”72 Bédier’s respect for hierarchy, unquestioning praise of French culture, and theories of historical continuity (la vieille France éternelle) all gave comfort to creoles and reactionaries alike. His scholarship bolstered the racialist definitions of French identity that justified traditionalist elitism in both the colony and the metropole. In this sense, Bédier’s identity as a diaspora creole coincides with the reactionary definition of national feeling current in his later life. Bédier and Barrès both privilege the Middle Ages without becoming monarchist — and support the republic without becoming egalitarian. Taken together, Bédier’s political connections, statements, and actions do not add up to a single ideological stance. Situated between the patriots of 1870 and the young nationalists of 1914, Bédier’s traditionalist nationalism developed from a combination of colonial chivalry, historical scholarship, and idiosyncratic personal affinities. His political engagements mirror the structure, if not the content, of many others, from De Mahy to Blum

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(who never completely gave up on Barrès, who himself never completely abandoned Jaurès). Bédier’s situation is thus both unique and representative of the complex patterns discerned by Zeev Sternhell, who concludes that conventional notions of “left” and right” do little to illuminate political reasoning during the Third Republic. The sum of Bédier’s individual affiliations resonate with these broader political entanglements, especially during the 1930s when ultranationalists, radicals, socialists—and creoles— all defended the colonial enterprise.73 Within this pliable ideological mix Bédier activated the Middle Ages as a locus of national reconciliation. In one sense, he joined the generalized trend of republican medievalism, seeking national legitimacy in France’s most distant origins. As a scholar actively creating knowledge about those origins, he engaged in a twofold politics: his medievalism both reflected and created a desirable vision of the past.74 Ultimately, Bédier’s specifically creole medievalism represents a particularly potent form of national belonging (for himself and for all of France’s citizens). Creole medievalism offered a multifaceted concept capable of satisfying the patriotic imagination of people who might have disagreed about most everything else (from socialists to royalists). It translates the ideological complexities of creole republicanism into influential scholarship and popular modernizations of medieval literature. Creole Chivalry

Bédier’s medievalism emerges first and foremost from the traditionalist culture of the Réunionnais elite. Creoles staked their claim to primacy in the empire on their faithful preservation of France’s oldest and best traditions—that is, on an idealized vision of medieval chivalry. The creole elite understood themselves as a colonial aristocracy, the last vestige of the noble society that once defined France itself. This myth of inherited privilege permeated both public and private culture. In Bédier’s case, the family romance of aristocratic lineage began with colonial exile: specifically, the royal banishment of the lord of a castle in Ménéhouarne (near Vannes in Brittany). Bédier would have read this story in a book written by his father, Adolphe, which recounts the family lineage back to the early eighteenth century. According to Adolphe, the first migrant Bédier repurchased his lands in Brittany but died before restoring his title, “Sire de Maine et Ouarn.”75 Belief in this heritage shaped a creole identity that included

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an aristocratic responsibility to defend noble causes. This code of values, adopted by generations of Bédier descendents and shared by many of their creole compatriots, can best be described as chivalric. Its debt to a myth of valiant knights—and later, musketeers—brings traditional creole identity into direct dialogue with an idealized Middle Ages. In this sense, creole medievalism had broad cultural currency on Réunion well before Joseph Bédier elaborated a scholarly version for national consumption. Aristocratic identity underwrote class privilege and social entitlement. Bédier, by his own admission, imbibed these lessons by reading his father’s book and his grandparents’ letters.76 Adolphe insists throughout his narrative on the family’s multiple layers of aristocratic lineage, from the Breton founder of the paternal line to the grandmother who married a descendent of a fifth-century Irish king.77 Through political upheavals large and small, the family core remained loyally “chevaleresque” and royalist.78 The truest sign of this aristocratic pedigree, for Adolphe, was the family’s steadfast maintenance of traditional values, including honor and a disdain for bourgeois commercial interests (considered immoral).79 Adolphe attributes these traits to all true creole families: the good ones trace their roots to the younger sons of noble French families; everything good in the colony derives from their influence. As Adolphe describes traditional creole values, he returns again and again to chivalric vocabulary, whether praising the dueling skills of distant ancestors or the riding skills of his father. Bédier expressed his own “hereditary royalism” when he dated a letter by noting the centennial of the death of Louis XVI, “our king, slaughtered by bourgeois revolutionaries.”80 And it is no accident that Bédier’s admirers readily described him as a “chivalric” figure who considered the word “noble” the highest possible form of praise.81 Colonial education reinforced the sense of chivalric responsibility that Bédier gained from family influence. Speeches given at annual award ceremonies at the Lycée de Saint-Denis articulate some of the principles that informed insular pedagogy. Speakers regularly emphasize a militaristic patriotism that underscores students’ duty to serve France, defend colonialism, and support revanche against Germany through academic excellence.82 In 1884, the vice rector described the lycée explicitly as “a great school of patriotism in which we teach how to love France.”83 Another speaker cast this patriotic service in specifically chivalric terms: “the honor of our country was always to take the defense of the weak against the strong.”84 In 1921, Raphaël Barquissau stated that the creole “cult of chivalric honor”

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maintains the values of “Old France”; one of those values is the “eternal genius” of colonialism.85 Bédier’s own teachers exhorted him and his fellows to honor both “la Patrie créole” and the Republic.86 Bédier and his compatriots absorbed this chivalric self-image as part of their creole consciousness. The famous Réunionnais aviator Roland Garros (“Knight of the Air”), for example, proclaimed of his military service: “I was Creole . . . I was therefore more ready than others to make war without hatred”; even more recently a Réunionnais historian compared Garros to “a knight of the Middle Ages challenged in a tournament.”87 Creole patriotism, in other words, meant embracing the idealized legacies of the medieval aristocracy. Educators nourished both chivalry and republicanism in their daily writing assignments. Some of Bédier’s actual essays survive,88 revealing how even commonplace selections could resonate distinctly in tropical imaginations. His first essay is a Latin–French translation exercise on “why God does not wish to have slaves.” While the theme is theologically ordinary, on Réunion the slavery metaphor supports a racialized lesson in the value of social conformity. It complements teachers’ annual exhortations to students to fulfill their inherited obligations by choosing to serve France (just as Christians choose to serve God). Bédier’s three other essays come from “French narration”; they all tell stories of defiant nationalist heroism based on well-known historical episodes. “Le naufrage de Camoëns” [The Shipwreck of Camoëns] recounts how the revered author of the Portuguese national epic, the Lusiades (1572), saved himself and his manuscript from drowning off the coast of Indochina. The passage combines epic narration (of both Camoëns and Portugal) with imperial history: serving the Portuguese crown in Goa (India), Camoëns ran afoul of a local official who exiled him to Macao (China), where he penned the epic in the throes of exilic longing. Bédier’s composition captures the pathos of colonial heroism and the epic grandeur of an Indian Ocean storm. Even the prayer that ultimately saves Camoëns takes on local color, as he addresses the Virgin Mary as “Star of the sea” [Etoile de la mer]. The next two essays likewise inflect distant events with local resonance: “The Taking of the Fortress” [L’enlèvement de la Redoute] recounts an episode of the Napoleonic wars in Russia (1812), apparently based on a short story by Prosper Mérimée of the same title, in which a young captain joins his first regiment just before a particularly bloody confrontation. While Mérimée’s story presents a detached and insincere hero, Bédier’s essay portrays a sentimental heroism — the young captain, in his fear, thinks of

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his family; an older officer serves as a protective father figure. The town of Saint-Denis, moreover, has its own “Redoute” —the outpost overlooking the sea that formed the local front of the Napoleonic wars. In July 1810, a small contingent of Bourbonnais famously defended the fortress against the English for three days before surrendering. The Russian episode of the essay and the English episode of local history both invite children to identify with the glory of patriotic death. Finally, Bédier’s fourth essay waxes lyrical on the beauty of the ocean while recounting the shipwreck of the Vengeur during the Revolutionary wars (1794): after engaging the English, the damaged ship reputedly sank with its entire crew shouting “Vive la République!” The assigned essay ingenuously combines republican celebration with appreciation for the tropical landscape (the changing colors of the ocean, shores lined with filaos trees). It enacts a literally elemental form of creole republicanism. Patriotic pedagogy imbued chivalry with colonial racialism. Barquissau (who actively promoted Bédier’s creole reputation) told a group of students in 1921: You who will tomorrow be the elite, make yourselves the knights of all noble causes. . . . A noble French lineage bequeaths to you its role and its primacy in the sea of the Indies, show yourselves worthy. Will we say “Blood cannot lie”? It can lie. It depends on you that it not lie.89 For Barquissau, colonial chivalry is a birthright, but also a challenge to prove that one deserves to have been born. His emphasis on the precarious nature of biological determination — blood can lie—alludes to the complexity of racial identity on Réunion. In the colony, even those of pure blood can be tempted to behave ignobly — and those who seem pure may not be. The racial anxieties that underlie Barquissau’s address derive from the fact of multiple racial identities among his students, who undoubtedly looked something like the photo of the lycée’s students published for the Paris exposition of 1900 — a range of skin tones, the relatively dark more or less equal in number to the relatively light.90 Expressing his distrust of blood, Barquissau both affirms the birthright of the elite and recognizes métissage. The result is a colonial mixture of racism and egalitarianism: the island’s white creole youth has inherited a high social responsibility; their education, not their blood, will enable them to meet it. Chivalry, with its

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uncontested European pedigree, offers a framework for protecting creole identity from the vagaries of blood genealogy. Indeed, for Bédier, chivalry defined life itself: accepting the presidency of the Alliance Française in 1934, he wrote: “Life is chivalry.”91 For both Bédier and Barquissau, creole chivalry offered the most secure path from colonial subjectivity to national citizenship. Barquissau’s rhetorical question “Will we say ‘Blood cannot lie’?” refers to a standard cliché of colonial culture: blood genealogy determines class identity and chivalric instinct. Bédier’s father, for example, concludes that his younger cousins, whom he did not know well, must be as honorable as their older brothers: “there are bloods that never lie.”92 Elite creoles thus habitually treat class as a racial trait: resistance to slavery targeted the “white class”; the Leblonds regularly refer to the characteristics of the “white class” (including its innate talent for colonization).93 Bédier’s father even judges marriages between social classes (poor European migrants and wealthy white creoles) with the disdain of mixed-race unions: Our family has undergone contact with [such immigrants], unfortunately, and in the genealogies that I’ve given you, there are indeed one or two names of “gray coats”: they will be designated by the silence that I will keep about them and you will never consider them your relatives.94 For Adolphe, the offspring of class miscegenation do not belong to the family. He insists that these people not be confused with the “real” creoles whom they resemble outwardly: interclass mingling is more pernicious than traditional métissage precisely because it cannot be seen at a glance. Bédier held a similarly strict view of creole chivalry as a blood inheritance. Eulogizing his brother Édouard in 1893, he noted the influence of his father’s “noble lessons,” but attributed Édouard’s honorable conduct almost exclusively to genealogy: “we had received in our blood such an old tradition of honor that he conformed himself to it without effort, by nature and almost without merit.”95 The highest accolade Bédier can envision rests on blood purity: “You have kept pure our old name.”96 Bédier’s notion of creole identity thus conflates the inheritance of class privilege with the ontology of race, a notion he later underscores when he defines himself as “a blond Bourbonnais with blue eyes, of a race protected from any mixing.”97 This comment appears in various forms in prominent

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metropolitan and colonial remembrances of Bédier’s life.98 The essence of Bédier’s colonial identity, both for him and for others, thus rests on a racialized chivalry that comes “naturally” to those of pure blood. Bédier’s inherited chivalry joined fortuitously with republican medievalism when he received a copy of Roland as a school prize in 1878 at the age of fourteen.99 Indeed, he later dated his interest in the Middle Ages to this moment.100 That Bédier’s teachers found Roland the most fitting prize for their star pupil speaks volumes. At the time, the epic was just beginning its assent to dominance in the pedagogy of national literary history (see chapter 1). Bédier’s reading of Léon Gautier’s patriotic preface would have been conditioned by the specifically colonial patriotism that had already shaped his cultural environment. Bédier’s father, moreover, described the duels of his family’s ancestors as survivals of the medieval custom of “Judgment by God.”101 In the creole context, Roland —which ends with just such a combat—portrays the distant precursor of a family tradition of vigorously defended honor. A certain medievalism, in other words, shaped Bédier’s creole subjectivity, which in turn shaped his view of the Middle Ages. For subsequent generations of Réunionnais students, Roland continued to give historical dimension to a living discourse of chivalric privilege. Already in 1894, Roland served as a recognizable model of ideal action and a resource for creole republicanism: a graduation speaker concluded that the colony’s young “pure bloods” needed great energy to face the challenges ahead; if even Roland tired of fighting and lay down on his bloody sword (despite the inspiration of his “blond” fiancée, Aude), creoles would need extraordinary strength to serve both the island and the nation.102 Thirty years later, just after Bédier had published his own edition of Roland, a speaker at another graduation evoked Réunion’s noble and “chivalric” history, only to conclude that in the end a knight must act alone, “sustained only by the shout of valiance: Mont Joie Saint-Denis.”103 This medieval battle cry echoes Roland’s “Munjoie.” It reminds young creoles of Roland’s heroic struggle — and of the hair of Saint Denis (France’s first saint) encased in his sword. “Saint-Denis” also conflates Roland’s chivalry with Réunion’s capital, itself an echo of the nation’s sacred center outside Paris (also referenced in Roland).104 Bédier himself served as a model of creole chivalry for later generations of Réunionnais. Already in 1911, students at the lycée learned that they should honor Bédier among their most illustrious compatriots.105 At the

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time of his election to the Académie Française in 1920, his reputation soared. For the next three years, graduation speakers at the lycée present Bédier, “medievalist and troubadour,” as a model of creole accomplishment, exhorting their young charges to make themselves worthy of his example.106 Hippolyte Foucque, for example, reminds students that Bédier once sat in their same seats and followed perfectly the recommended motto: “Travail, Patriotisme, Idéalisme” [Work, Patriotism, Idealism]; he concludes by admonishing graduates to show themselves worthy of the glory brought to the colony by Bédier: “Gesta Dei per Francos. Whether we translate “France, soldier of God’ or ‘France, soldier of the Idea,’ it’s the same thing. It’s the summary of our past, it’s the announcement of our future.”107 The Latin title refers to a chronicle of the First Crusade: the allusion takes up Bédier’s own understanding of the eleventh-century Crusades as the origins of France while underscoring the chivalric basis of creole identity. In remarkably condensed fashion, Foucque’s Gesta Dei per Francos enfolds creole action within prestigious historical, religious, and national paradigms. As Réunionnais officials celebrated Bédier as a model of creole chivalry, Bédier himself claimed the chivalric models of his own ancestors as the primary inspiration of his medieval studies. In a letter to friends on the island, he wrote: I love these old creoles, their taste for risk and adventure, the way in which they pass from lethargy to energy, their pride, the refined sense of honor that they have, their chivalry. I have often asked them for guidance. And if I have become an historian of the France of yesteryear, it is because I tasted their great sense of French tradition, of French order, their intoxicated love of the motherland. It is to their image that I have above all tried to conform my life.108 Explicitly naming the creole ideals illustrated in his father’s book, Bédier anchors his personal and scholarly life in a medieval culture that survives uniquely on Bourbon. He strives to extend this prestigious tradition into the national future — living a “perfect imitation” of chivalric patriotism through medieval studies. In this same letter, he attributes his compatriots’ appreciation of his achievements more to his lineage than to himself:

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I understand that it is not only to me, not even principally to me, that these signs of appreciation are addressed, but to the name that I carry, to my father and my mother, to the one who was like “my more than father” Du Tertre, to my brother Édouard, who served the colony well, and to the double lineage of people of honor from whom I descend.109 Insisting on the collective reputation of the name Bédier, Bédier casts Bourbonnais admiration for his career as an expression of genealogical approval and aristocratic memory [en souvenir et en l’honneur de nos anciens]. Moreover, Bédier presents his own understanding of this fact as proof that he himself remains faithful to traditional creole values despite having left the island thirty-three years ago. Creole chivalry demands, in other words, not only honorable conduct and pure blood, but durable memory. The tenets of creole chivalry embraced by Bédier, his father, and other compatriots remained alive in later generations, articulated most stridently by the Leblonds. In their energetic defenses of traditional creole culture into the 1950s, they embraced the Middle Ages as foundational to the “genius” of French colonialism.110 They discerned the beginnings of France’s colonial imaginary in the Middle Ages: the Merovingians (the dynasty of the fifth to eighth centuries) stood for the “primitive” culture that preceded the beginnings of national glories with eleventh-century colonialism.111 They characterized both colonialism and republicanism as essentially chivalric endeavors based on egalitarian humanism.112 When they conceived a museum for Réunion in 1911, they arranged for it to include gothic statuary (an expression of the French “soul”); they attributed the creole “predisposition” for love and poetry to the culture of the creole salon—“which recalls more than anything else the love court of the Middle Ages.”113 For the Leblonds, creole culture derived almost directly from an idealized Middle Ages—as did the best of French national culture. The Leblonds’ promotion of chivalry as the answer to the nation’s ills in the 1940s reveals the deeply racialist basis of chivalric thinking among traditional creoles (chillingly untouched by the horrors of Nazi racism). Marius begins his 1941 Redressement by invoking Vercingétorix (emblem of Celtic genius), Saint Louis, and Jeanne d’Arc; he concludes with a call for a “Return to Chivalry.”114 Four years later in La paix française, his discourse remains exactly the same:

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Chivalry in humanism, chivalry in patriotism, chivalry in literature and art, chivalry in friendship, chivalry in fertile love, chivalry in all gestures and thoughts. It is chivalry that will suppress the childish antinomy between aristocracy and democracy. The renaissance of Chivalry is imperative to the grand opera of French culture, next to which [Wagner’s] Walkyrie are flashes of prehistoric times.115 In Marius’s imagination, a national practice of chivalry will consign Germany to premedieval primitivism relative to France’s shining march toward equality and civilization. Elsewhere, Marius extols the genius of French colonialism (beginning with the Crusades) alongside the superiority of the “white race” and the beatific tradition of French chivalry; he continues to implicate Bédier in the racial defense of empire.116 A few years later in his bid for election to the Académie Française, he described his own life’s work as “Action by every means in favor of an enthusiastic and chivalric patriotism.”117 Not surprisingly, the epic emerges as the preferred genre of Marius’s project for national restoration.118 By this time, though, creole chivalry had lost its aristocratic innocence: Marius had recommended cooperation with Pétain during the Nazi occupation, and collaborators had tainted chivalry with the period’s darkest crimes.119 The Leblonds epitomize, in extreme form, the racialism that permeates colonial society. From the island’s earliest settlement, multiple migrations have sustained a large mixed-race population. Métissage, or “blood politics,”120 conditions racial identity for all Réunionnais, regardless of epidermal aspect. Indeed, Bédier’s own colonial origins became visible in Paris only through contact with métissage: Joseph Bédier, who was born on Réunion, like so many other writers, received often at his home persons of more or less dark color, natives of the island formerly called Bourbon. His doorkeeper . . . was so well accustomed to these visits that she indicated the floor of the professor before she was even asked.121 For this anonymous newspaper columnist, the “more or less dark color” of Bédier’s visitors reveals his own formation in colonial society (white creoles, by contrast, might have had to give their names before being admitted into the building). Bédier only appears as a “white creole,” in other

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words, through his associations with islanders who bear visible traces of non-European ancestry. Two competing discourses define the racial parameters of “creole” identity. On the one hand, some claim that métissage touches everyone, even those who appear “white.” The Martinican métis activist Cyrille Bissette formulated this idea succinctly, commenting on the 1836–37 trial of Bourbonnais métis accused of inciting slave rebellion: With the exception of an extremely small number of European families, or just about, everyone who lives on Bourbon and who claims a white origin descends by their maternal line from Malagasy who are perfectly copper or from Indians who are perfectly black. Whites on Bourbon Island are therefore mixed, mixedbloods, “béqués,” creamed coffee, as they are called in the creole language of the Antilles.122 Bissette accuses the island’s “so-called” whites of seeking to “purify” their own mixed blood by expelling other métis inhabitants.123 Historically, colonial legal systems had fostered the integration of métis into “white” society. When slavery was established in 1723, the children of Franco–Indian and Franco–Malagasy unions were classified as “white.” A century later, the métis descendents of a liberated slave married into white families.124 Travelers in the period describe “rainbow families,” with each generation lighter than the one before.125 Leconte de Lisle’s short story “Sacatove” (1846) shows white society welcoming the métis child of a woman who returns to her family after an affair: “no one said that her firstborn had skin less white than hers.”126 This ironic comment reveals the hypocrisies of colonial society, the fragility of claims to purity, and the ease with which métissage could enter into “pure” genealogies. Even Bédier had to admit that his father’s genealogy named none of the mothers in his maternal line before 1830127 —in other words, none between his grandmother and the first Bédier migrant. If Adolphe Bédier does not name those who intermarried with lower-class whites, could he have left interracial family members in true silence? So believe some contemporary Bédiers, who can embrace universal métissage as comfortably as Bissette: unprompted, Adrien Bédier offered this account of the family genealogy: “of course there are mixed-race relatives. Racist ancestors made them disappear. . . . The blue eyes skipped a generation in my

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family.”128 Here, the idea of universal métissage shifts from insurrectionary anathema to genealogical fact, consigning racism to the past even while leaving Francocentrism intact (in the same moment, Adrien Bédier criticized creolophone activists for erasing signs of French from the spelling conventions of Creole). During Joseph Bédier’s lifetime, the idea of universal métissage remained a proscribed “myth” attributed to outsiders and the visibly métis. White creoles, for their part, offered an alternate mythology of pure European genealogy for the (visibly) white elite. In the 1920s, Barquissau directly challenged the idea of a foundational métissage: “it’s not a bad idea to destroy a legend that some travelers have accredited frivolously, that of the métissage at the origin of the island’s colonization.”129 Marshalling “statistical” evidence, he argued that the “legend” spread from an eighteenth-century métis magistrate (government records, though, typically identify status—immigrants versus free laborers—rather than race).130 The most vocal proponents of creole purity were the Leblonds, who praised Barquissau’s account effusively: they wrote vividly about the social dangers posed by métis citizens, feared that the white race would disappear from the island, and popularized their ideas in novels like Le Miracle de la Race, épopée de la race blanche.131 To counter métissage, the Leblonds identified Celtic heritage as the dominant influence on creole culture.132 They encapsulated this ideological program in their pseudonym — “the Aryan Blond.”133 For them, “our ancestors the Gauls” accurately expressed the ideal of French genealogical nationalism. They addressed their first magazine, La Grande France, to the citizens of “ancient Gaul,” an idea they later made the foundation for a future United States of Europe.134 They went on to pen an immense fourvolume Breton novel, Les martyrs de la République (1926–28) and a twovolume history of Vercingétorix (1937–38) (a work of Celtic revisionism that posits that the Gauls would have attained an even higher level of civilization if the Romans had not invaded).135 They even made Jeanne d’Arc a Celt.136 They considered Réunion itself “entirely Celtic,” and thus the privileged heir to these ancient “French” traditions: Réunion preserved Breton legends and songs more faithfully then Brittany itself; the Breton language provided the basis for Creole.137 While insisting on the superiority of the Celtic, the Leblonds also idealized the benefits of a multiracial society. Their belief in the redemptive value of interracial contact serves not so much to promote the “inferior” races but to promote Réunion itself (ruled by white creoles) to neglectful

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metropolitan decision makers. In novels like Zézère, amours de Blancs et de Noirs, they idealize métissage in order to enhance the island’s unique service to France.138 According to them, Réunionnais, unlike other imperial subjects, had fully internalized the “color-blind” ideals of republican fraternalism. To illustrate this idea, Marius Leblond tells a story about Bédier: Bédier and Marius’s uncle Lionel Poitier considered a fellow student from the Caribbean their equal and occasionally shared their meals with him. “They were horrified to see him throw the bones of his cutlet over his shoulder onto the floor; the mahogany polish of his cheeks had nothing to do with it.”139 The point, for Marius, is that a lack of education, rather than skin color, made the man an uncivilized dining companion. The Leblonds’ support for multiracialism, however, serves white superiority. The Miracle de la race, after all, is that a young man overcomes the disadvantages of his education alongside children of color to engage in the quintessential activity of his white ancestors — colonization (of Madagascar, in this case). And the Leblonds’ earlier novels scrupulously separate groups according to fixed racial stereotypes.140 The Leblonds seemingly contradictory approach to race (criticize métissage, promote racial equality, maintain social segregation)141 ultimately supports a unified program of white privilege. Consonant with the Leblonds’ racial reasoning, Bédier insists pointedly on his own purely Celtic heritage. He purportedly took great pride in his blue eyes and blond hair —physiological proof that his blood had remained pure and his family without “misalliance.” Gustave Cohen reports that Bédier once confided: “You don’t know, my friend, what it is to be a blond Bourbonnais with blue eyes. It’s the purity index of a race that, in distant lands, preserved itself from all mixing.”142 Cohen later revised his description of Bédier’s words, writing that blond hair and blue eyes signify “continuous tradition” and “purity of race, without any misalliance.”143 Bédier’s first words in all three of Cohen’s accounts, however, refer not to race but to the impossibility of proper interpretation: “you don’t know” [vous ne savez pas]. By insisting that metropolitans cannot fathom the meaning of his appearance, Bédier indicates that white creoles lose their racial identity when they migrate to the metropole. Indeed, Bédier’s physiognomy means so little in Paris that in one instance Cohen asserts that he looks more Norman than Breton (dismissing Bédier’s own ethnic claims).144 If on Bourbon “white” epidermal coloring purported to signal a long history of racial privilege, it ceased to mean much of anything among the crowds of other white faces in Paris. Bédier endeavors to recover the

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“shock value” of his appearance in a 1923 interview: “I am a Breton from Bourbon Island—this surprises you? It’s nonetheless a true story.”145 By attributing “surprise” to his interlocutor, Bédier recovers the meaning his blue eyes should have. In the metropole, white creoles risked trading colonial prestige for provincial marginalization. Unless they succeeded in “passing” directly into the metropolitan elite through perfect linguistic and cultural performance, they were likely to be judged “inferior.” To succeed, they needed to banish the “corrupting” and “enslaving” effects of Creole.146 And any trace of “accent” in French could attract the same denigration as provincial dialects (newly stigmatized in a republican education system that strove for national uniformity).147 Even today, Réunionnais accents attract a “colonial” stigma considered even lower than the “provincial.”148 Cognizant of this kind of prejudice, islanders declared their differences from, and superiority over, rural metropolitans.149 Evidence of metropolitan bias against white creoles appears revealingly in the brief appreciation of Leconte de Lisle published by Baudelaire in 1861: asking himself why creoles had generally not contributed anything significant to literature, he contrasts Leconte de Lisle’s virile originality with a portrait of “typical” creoles—provincial, effeminate, and naturally imitative, “a faculty they share incidentally with blacks.”150 White creole migrants to Paris thus entered a society more likely to classify them as provincial “savages” than as chivalric elites—that is, one more likely to wield the Middle Ages against them rather than for them. Bédier actually offers a rather detailed picture of “what it means” to be white on Réunion. He recounts several childhood memories in a letter to a compatriot, Georges Mareschal de Bièvre (who had just published a pamphlet on Bourbon’s Revolutionary history): I have just read with charm and emotion your refined study of Bourbon in the time of slavery. It brought back many memories: in my time, the customs had hardly changed. I see again clearly, among the dear figures of my childhood, an old freeman, Richard, who stayed with the household, and my old nanny, Olympe, who had been, as a slave, my father’s nurse. And a certain page of your study reminded me of a cafrine [black woman] with polished teeth, Rita, who, after twenty years of domestic service in our house, received on the same day, during an illness, the sacraments of baptism, penitence, the Eucharist, marriage, and Last Rites.151

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Bédier’s images of domestic life testify to intimate interracial relations— and to the minimal changes in household structures thirty years after the abolition of slavery. Bédier, in the early twentieth century, remains essentially a product of slave society. Racial identities determined roles within the household, such that a creole youth knew himself every day as a racialized actor. “What it is,” then, to be a blond creole is to refute the myth of universal métissage. Indeed, according to one commentator, Bédier “revolted instinctively” and with “repugnance” against those who had “fallen out of line” [forligné]; they in turn treated him with the “ancestral humility” due to the “son of the masters.”152 Others also insist on Bédier’s racial purity—“a colonial of pure French race,” “without a shadow of métissage.”153 Bédier himself repeatedly expresses longing to return to the colonial place where racial continuity was meaningful in ways that could never be known in the metropole. On Réunion, chivalry resided in the consonance between skin color and noble action; there, the masters of slaves redeemed colonial society through the ideals of the medieval aristocracy. Creole Exile

Bédier came to his understanding of race through multiple migrations. Born in Paris, he lived within a diaspora community that maintained the ideals of creole chivalry (as his father’s book attests). Colonial culture thus influenced his racial and linguistic consciousness even before his widowed mother moved her children to Saint-Denis in 1870 (just months before the Prussian invasion). Bédier then experienced, at age six, both a rupture and return: rupture with the urban metropole and return to origins that had remained palpable if physically distant. This “return,” however, would have been saturated with the unfamiliar — from tropical flora to architecture to currency (the roupie circulated as legal tender).154 Most importantly, Bédier soon felt the full force of “what it is” to be a blond creole: living as a privileged minority in colonial society, he experienced the birth of the “whiteness” that he later identified so clearly as the basis of his identity. Race and exile both condition his subsequent articulation of “home” as a double dislocation and double belonging — from and to the metropole, from and to the colony. As Bédier moves from Paris to Saint-Denis to Paris to Saint-Denis and finally permanently to Paris, he casts himself as a homeless creole on a permanent quest for national belonging. This sense

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of roving exile underlies many of his ideas about memory and history in the Middle Ages. Simultaneously exile, migrant, and native wherever he goes, Bédier uses medievalism to resolve these fragments into a homogenous vision of national history. Bédier returned to Paris for the first time in 1881, as a postbaccalaureate student. In this migration, he both lost and found his homeland—resettling in a city he must have remembered to some degree and losing the place he knew most intimately. Even in Paris, though, Bédier’s community remained creole, through an extended network of family connections.155 Bédier and his brother found a second home with De Mahy, their cousin the deputy. From 1883 to 1891, Bédier lived frequently with De Mahy, both in Paris and in the Touraine at De Mahy’s “château”; through De Mahy, Bédier met his wife, Eugénie Bizarelli, daughter of a senator.156 Bédier sought De Mahy’s counsel for all major decisions, from his personal life to his career; they remained in frequent contact until De Mahy’s death in 1906.157 Throughout his life, Bédier continued to cultivate connections with his fellow “exiles” in Paris, and with his family and friends on Réunion.158 Even while teaching in Fribourg, Switzerland, he frequented Réunionnais circles.159 Years later, he reportedly attended faithfully the monthly lunch of the “Bichique-Club” in Paris (organized by Roland Garros’s father), and joined a committee to erect a memorial to Roland Garros in SaintDenis.160 When, in 1930, the Maurician poet Robert Edward Hart offered Bédier a book with an elaborate personal dedication, Bédier asked him to write simply, “To Joseph Bédier, old creole.”161 At the time of his death, a majority of his obituaries recognized his creole origins; his compatriots judged him among the most famous of creoles of the day.162 This reputation, along with Bédier’s own comments, leave no doubt as to his enduring commitment to creole identity. Bédier’s youthful letters to his close friend Joseph Texte express the various forms of alienation wrought by Bédier’s identification with the creole diaspora. For starters, layers of creole subjectivity traverse Bédier’s nickname, “Makokote.” The term refers both to a baby chick (cocotte) and a young woman of questionable morals.163 “Makokote” thus both infantilizes and feminizes, objectifying Bédier as belonging to someone else (“my chick”). The substitution for “k” for “c,” moreover, “creolizes” the nickname, inviting association with the term makot—something old, broken or dirty (as in “Si po koz in fransé makot, mié vo anvoiy an kréol” [If you

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speak broken French, it’s better to speak Creole]).164 Bédier illustrates the confrontation of his own creole identity with philology through a metrical analysis of the nickname: Ma”. . . 傼 (anacrouse

Kókótt! — ´ cf.; Müller)

Referring to Lucian Müller’s treatise on Latin metrics (which defines anacrusis as a “monosyllabic prelude” to a verse),165 this formula weds colonial experience to Bédier’s scholarly present. Underscoring the “weakness” of the personal (unaccented “Ma”), Bédier’s diagram insinuates the problem of creole selfhood into the facts of philological science. Bédier amplifies the alienation encoded in the nickname when he gives himself the title “Sir Makokote”166 —a gesture both ennobling (in line with creole chivalry) and distancing (in a foreign language). In Bédier’s letters, “Makokote” stands for the initial confusions of the migrant self.167 Bédier’s double alienation, from both colony and metropole, surfaces dramatically in his reflections on his visit back to Bourbon in 1887. From the beginning, he envisions this trip as an expiation of the past that will enable him to work unencumbered: I have decided to sacrifice everything to this life of the mind. I foresee the possibility of earning enough money this year . . . to go spend two months on Bourbon at the end of the year. I will see my parents again, for the last time in my life. After that, I will work at my pleasure.168 While Bédier’s failure to visit Réunion in later years may seem odd, given his attachment and many trips elsewhere,169 he clearly considered severance from the island a prerequisite to medieval scholarship. At this point, his commitment to intellectual pursuits requires a denial of the self: “Nothing is mine anymore”; he writes later of a “sacrifice of the heart.”170 He quite consciously intends, then, to substitute his connection to the distant place with a new one to a distant time. A year later, he declares definitively “Makokote is a pedant.”171 However, the fusion of time and place that formed a creole medievalist was gradual. And Bourbon relentlessly shadowed Bédier’s efforts to live with the Middle Ages.

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Bédier’s sense of sacrifice was partly conditioned by his brother’s reverse sacrifice three years earlier. Seemingly destined for a brilliant scientific career, Édouard instead returned to Bourbon to teach in the lycée. Bédier notes that Édouard did not question whether it was legitimate to forgo his scientific research, “as if he had made the sacrifice of his own self.”172 Édouard’s decision to return, in other words, is as much a sacrifice as Bédier’s decision not to. According to Bédier, Édouard felt not only indebted to the colony for funding his studies in Paris, but also “he felt himself invincibly drawn to our little country to which we are attached by bonds so numerous, so old and so hardy, and that no creole ever manages [parvenir] to forget.”173 Bédier’s phrasing suggests that diaspora creoles aspire to forget but cannot. For the educated creole, as Bédier and his compatriots always insist, neither France nor Bourbon offers a peaceful resolution to the fractures of creole subjectivity. Despite the vague sense of doom that hangs over Bédier’s decision to visit Bourbon in 1887, he anticipates the trip with unconditional joy: “What a trip! My God! What a trip!” He describes himself as a vagabond, or pilgrim, preparing to “tie up [his] knapsack”; next to him, Voltaire’s optimistic Candide is nothing but an “embroiderer of blackness.”174 Bédier writes to Texte again with the “joy” of anticipation, and again from on board the ship.175 He concludes a second shipboard letter, in which he describes the Suez Canal, with: “Here at last the so-desired Indian Ocean.”176 With the prospect of home, Bédier focuses entirely on the Indian Ocean, turned into object of universal desire [le tant desiré]. Between the lines of Bédier’s later claim to excellent eyesight, one can read the anxious gaze of this homecoming: “in his youth, when he went to Bourbon island, he spied land before the lookout.”177 With a possessive, joyful view of the tropical horizon, Bédier concludes six homesick years. The journey to Bourbon, however, has already revealed the degree to which he sees with metropolitan eyes: traveling through the Suez Canal, he gives himself “Parisian lips” and compares the experiences to a day trip along the Seine.178 Bédier’s activities and experiences during his two-month visit remain largely unknown. After arriving on August 15, he could have attended the annual meeting of the alumni of his lycée on the 28th; he refers later to happy family gatherings.179 The local press for this period, however, provides a revealing glimpse of life in Saint-Denis. Newspapers testify to a general sense of crisis: the pending application of a new military service law, the suspension of direct passenger service to Marseille (the French

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Australia line, on which Bédier traveled, would no longer stop at Bourbon), the depletion of funds supporting students (such as Bédier) studying in France, unfavorable tariffs for trade with the metropole, and violence in Madagascar.180 With De Mahy serving as deputy and Du Tertre as vice president of the Conseil Général and member of the Commission Coloniale, these policy issues were something of family affair. Indeed, Bédier had ties of “either affection or blood” to almost every family on the island,181 heightening his sensitivity to local affairs and the poignancy of his “sacrifice.” Two months after returning from Bourbon, Bédier’s letters evidence deep psychological pain: he writes of “a fairly painful state of crisis”; describing his conflicting homesick emotions, he characterizes life on Bourbon as “simultaneous joy and pain.”182 Haunted by “dark thoughts” and still in pain [douleureux], Bédier regrets the trip altogether: I regret this trip to Bourbon; I regret rather having come back from there. In any case, these are trials that one doesn’t renew. For the moment, I would like to be able to chase away all these memories. Happy are those who can return among their painful memories without finding some humiliation or some shame —I have left so much on Bourbon! and for forever — and to do what?—study romance languages [romaniser], learn German, etc.? Who will deliver me from this feeling of “what’s the use”?183 Bédier’s feelings are divided here: he regrets going as well as returning. He decides, again, never to return and to forget. In this moment, his homesickness almost derails his career at its inception. And what are the unnamed humiliation and shame? In any case, “romaniser” will become the lifelong activity that takes the place of forgetting: “To forget! That is the desire— but for that I will need a goal.” Tiring of analyzing himself, he concludes: “It’s just that I’ve left so many things on Bourbon! I’m an idiot to have returned. Well, here I am. I will work then.” “Return” has now become ambiguous, expressing Bédier’s split sense of place: should he never have returned to Bourbon, or to Europe? “Work” takes the place that “forgetting” never can—healing the rupture of migration. Since the only solutions could never have taken place (never to have left Paris, never to have left Bourbon), “work” will be a constant labor of mourning that betrays a per-

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manent homesickness (shortly afterwards he calls it “consoling”).184 This labor entails willful blindness: “I will be like a man who becomes blind.” By the end of this letter, the people of Bédier’s insular past survive only as ghosts, figments who wander through his imagination [je fais marcher, aller, venir ceux de Bourbon].185 The Middle Ages take the place of colonial memory as Bédier seeks a literally postcolonial life.186 For him, the medieval promises to resolve the exilic condition shared by all creoles: “divided between the large and the small homeland [la grande et la petite patrie], whether they opt for one or the other, their life always depends on exile.”187 Bédier’s nearly continuous work on the topic of origins, and especially on Roland, shows that the ruptures of migration cannot be forgotten. Meanwhile, still in December 1887, Bédier’s agony over “becoming medieval” continues unabated. Writing to Gaston Paris, he describes his apartment in Halle as a kind of laboratory for memory work: the décor includes a copy of an engraving by Dürer (1471–1528), a painting by Holbein (1497–1543), a copy of a Rembrandt (1606–69), and “some strange ferns from Bourbon Island.”188 This collection of memorabilia, which Bédier considers “a great luxury,” condenses multilayered memories. The ferns keep Bourbon literally close at hand; they represent the essence of the tropics (public displays of Réunionnais identity in Paris always included ferns).189 The artists, none of them French, represent “universal” European culture outside the orbit of the particularities of France (metropolitan or colonial). This “universal,” however, derives partly from nineteenth-century French romantics, who readily adopted Dürer as an artistic compatriot — a fellow genius suffering at the gates of modernity.190 Late romantics actually associated Dürer with the medieval: Huysmans’s famous “medieval” study, described in 1891, also contained copies of Dürer and Rembrandt.191 Bédier and his student friends clearly absorbed this popular ethos. Texte, for example, had written enthusiastically in 1886 of his own encounter with Dürer and Holbein in Bâle; Bédier had the chance to visit Dürer originals in Nuremberg in July 1888, writing of his great appreciation.192 The significance of Bédier’s decorating choices may be taken further if the Dürer print, as his heirs remember, was Melencolia (Figure 31).193 Later comments by Bédier strengthen the Melencolia hypothesis: reviewing Mâle’s L’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age, Bédier praised the book’s style by stating that it resembled Michelet’s commentary on Melencolia.194 Melancholy accurately characterizes the homesick ethos of the creole

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Figure 31. Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514. Bequest of William L. Chapman Jr., Class of 1895. Photograph courtesy of Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University.

diaspora.195 Dürer’s famous image represents an allegory of “sad science,” a wan figure who finds no cheer in the calculus of wisdom. For Michelet, Dürer illustrates a critical stance on truth—one that Bédier also adopted. Michelet observes that everything in Melencolia is “powerfully true” and also sad: the “angel of science” is “captive of the burden of science.”196

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Scholarly duty also weighed on Bédier, as his letters testify. Bédier’s compatriots the Leblonds, by contrast, considered Melencolia “a victorious archangel of light” who meditates not on ruins but on “the continuity of his construction.”197 Bédier’s personal and scholarly devotion to continuity brings together these two assessments of Melencolia; the image symbolizes his conflicted aspirations to enter the citadel of national belonging. While there is something banal in finding “reflections” of Bédier’s mental state on his apartment walls, he apparently chose the prints to reflect his state of mind. Home and sadness remain at the heart of Bédier’s thoughts as he contemplates his future employment options. He wonders why he would accept a menial teaching post in a provincial lycée when he could have had a similar one on Bourbon without living “far from my family, perpetually heimatlos [homeless].”198 Here, Bédier resists following his brother back to Saint-Denis, fulfilling while also regretting his promise to “sacrifice” himself to scholarship. The profound loss of “home” brought by this decision resounds in the intrusion of the “foreign” word, heimatlos: Bédier writes as one newly “at home” in German, but also forever severed from familiar speech. The German word itself expresses the double dislocation of exile: just as unheimlich can refer to both the familiar and the unfamiliar,199 heimatlos includes both loss and recovery. The pain of heimatlos replaces here the optimisms of Gemüthlichkeit [friendly hominess] that Bédier claimed to share with the Germans two months earlier.200 In both cases, the German words signal a new line of fracture in Bédier’s sense of identity. In Germany, then, he seeks the artifice of settled comfort in an apartment decorated with tropical ferns and German artists. This comfort rests on a denial of home that enables entry into medieval France—and into a new form of national belonging. Bédier struggled persistently with desires to forget. Even late in life, he refers to his regrets and the enduring pain of “return”: I grew up, I spent my whole adolescence in one of our oldest colonies . . . I came back toward the soil of the motherland and I rooted myself anew, but I always/still [toujours] remain faithful to my distant island, and I always/still miss it.201 Bédier emphasizes the ongoing process of “becoming French” by saying that he came “toward” France. And even as he pens these lines, he writes

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himself closer to the colony and the colony closer to France: the autograph copy of this speech shows the addition of “my whole lineage” (reinforcing his long attachment to the island), the replacement of “colonies” with “our colonies,” and the replacement of “Europe” with “motherland.” These revisions intensify the bonds between France and Bourbon while underscoring Bédier’s divided loyalties. As he sought to suture displacement through a strategic forgetting, he repeatedly and even obsessively invested his desires for unified subjectivity in medievalism (the time of the oldest colonies). Of course, most migrants maintain multiple affiliations. Bédier’s particular longing for colonial healing, however, underwrites a narrative of national history that had substantial political and academic influence. As Bédier developed his scholarship, he returned consistently to his colonial memories (see chapter 4). His youthful desire for forgetting turned into a lifelong meditation on memory. As his reputation soared, he made Bourbon integral to his public persona. Creoles on Bourbon and around the world, for example, celebrated his election to the Académie Française as the latest jewel in the island’s crown of achievements.202 In his formal acceptance speech, Bédier identified Bourbon as a primary inspiration: And I hear cherished distant voices: they come to me from my country, noble among all the noble lands of sweet France, my little island Bourbon, incessantly stretched toward the motherland, and so taken with love for her that she [the island] intoxicates all of her children with this love.203 The voices of Bourbon, reaching Bédier’s ears as if by magic, speak to the transcendent nature of the creole community. Claiming the island’s superiority in the language of Roland (“sweet France”), Bédier turns Bourbon into the source of a patriotic nationalism that originates in the Middle Ages. Bédier elaborated on the creole origins of his medievalism to his compatriots, who organized their own celebration of his election. After describing how he read Roland as a boy, he declared his enduring attachment to Bourbon: I keep between the pages of an old book a fern leaf of gold picked in a ravine of Cilaos . . . a droplet of Bourbon’s sun is enclosed in it. Forty years have passed, the golden dust has not tarnished, neither has my heart.204

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The dried fern symbolizes Bédier’s untarnished heart — arrested in time between the leaves of “old books.” “Transplanted” and “uprooted,” the exiled creole still basks in the tropical sun of colonial memory. At this same celebration, Bédier received an ornate desk made of wood from Bourbon and decorated with scenes from both the island and Tristan et Iseut.205 At this desk, creole medievalism became for Bédier a daily practice of literal and figural return. Thanking those who made the desk possible, Bédier solidified these connections by claiming greater fluency in Creole than in French.206 As part of an extended claim that a faithful créolité generated his scholarly accomplishments, Bédier’s embrace of Creole signifies the intimate cohabitation of the creole and the medieval at the center of his historical epistemology. Bédier reflected again on creole identity when his compatriot Lacaze joined him at the Académie in 1937: It is our destiny to swarm [essaimer] and to run afar after various fortunes; but magnetic waves traverse lands and seas and bind us each to the others with the bonds of a mysterious telepathy.207 Bédier defines here an expansionist creole community that transcends geographical delimitations. Despite migration, the creole bees who have “swarmed” throughout the empire maintain continuous contact with the mother colony through “magnetic waves.”208 “Swarming” aligns Bédier with a colonialist créolité of the sort promoted by De Mahy, Barquissau, the Leblonds, and Lacaze himself—for young bees swarm specifically to establish new colonies. Napoleon captured this connotation when he adopted the Merovingian bee (instead of the Carolingian fleur-de-lis) for his imperial iconography.209 Bédier himself had long defined France’s historical greatness on the basis of its talent for “swarming” [essaimage]: for him, the nation began in the eleventh century when the French “swarmed” for the first time and established colonies throughout Europe and overseas (see chapter 2). The Leblonds also took up the metaphor, referring to creoles’ instrumental role in the “spread” [essaimer] of French civilization.210 In Bédier’s hands, the metaphor supports the “magnetic waves” that bind a secure creole community that knows no boundaries. Creole bonds depend not on colonial territory but on sentiment (much like the theories of national identity that favored emotion over territory after 1870 [chapter 1]).

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Bédier thus returned to Bourbon frequently on the waves of creole telepathy, even as he remained permanently in France. The conclusion of Bédier’s Lacaze speech further deterritorializes, and exalts, creole identity. On the one hand, Bédier applauds the Académie Française because it has elected five Bourbonnais in less than a century and a half — “more Bourbonnais than natives of any of our departments in three centuries.”211 On the other hand, he ties Bourbon’s distinct traditions to France: Following Lacaze’s example, may we —those like me who will never again see the cherished shores, and you the young people who hope to see them again — maintain in their original integrity, for the service of France, the traditions of our homeland, and may those who have remained there hear our friendly voices, our nostalgic voices, and receive the promises of firm and tender fidelity addressed to our mother island by her children who have left her and who still love her.212 Bédier sends back feelings of faith and belonging, just as he did the Roland that he republished this same year. He calls for the maintenance of the Bourbonnais in France, and for voices from France to find their way “telepathically” to the colony. The island itself matters little, since its traditions exist elsewhere; at the same time, it remains a vital geographical and genealogical origin. The traditions themselves perpetuate “Old France” even when France “herself ” has forgotten. Lacaze’s own speech affirms this principle: Bourbon is “true France, more France than the one our ancestors left.”213 Some years earlier, Bédier made the same point in relation to his childhood memories: All of my childhood impressions, all of my earliest sensations remain impregnated with memories, landscapes, horizons from over there . . . I have remained a Creole at heart, and never think without nostalgia of this land where remain, among 20,000 whites today, so many of our old ways, so many of our lovely customs from long ago, behind the coral reefs.214 Bédier racializes the “old customs” by limiting them to the island’s white population (a race of chivalric avatars). At the same time, he erases any

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trace of memory before migration: this autobiography begins on Bourbon, rather than in Paris. It underscores creole culture’s direct connections to national origins. Creoles’ claims to preserve “Old France” depend ultimately on their claims to genealogical purity, as the discourse of racialized chivalry attests. The genealogies granted the most prestige derive —like Bédier’s — from Brittany. Not surprisingly, then, Bédier’s Académie election elicited considerable commentary on his Breton ancestry as metropolitan observers sought to locate his “creole” history within a national context. Receiving Bédier before the Académie, Barthou recognized him as exemplary of the “tenacity and imagination” of the Breton race (14). Charles Le Goffic went further, arguing that Brittany alone explained Bédier’s formation: his vocation as a medievalist derived from the proximity of Ménézouarn (the location of the Bédier ancestral lands) to Brocéliande (the famous forest of medieval Arthurian romance). Le Goffic, moreover, chastised Bédier for not mentioning Brittany in his acceptance speech, when he had just a few days before used his full Breton name “for the first time” on a card left for Le Goffic, “Joseph Bédier de Ménézouarn.”215 Meanwhile, the art critic Georges Grappe developed an extensive portrait of Bédier le Breton, comparing the family’s colonial itinerary to that of Marie de France’s Eliduc, who in exile “wisely maintained their robust Amorican roots.” Like Le Goffic, Grappe downplays the effects of the “African soil,” insisting instead that Bédier received before birth all the gifts that an “exotic fairy” could have bestowed after birth: “imagination, artistic sensibility, light irony, a taste for dreams and broad horizons are Celtic virtues that his heredity transmitted to him, along with blond hair and blue eyes.” For Grappe, Bédier’s intellectual heritage is not Parny and Leconte de Lisle but the Bretons Chateaubriand and Renan: “this Frenchman from Amorica is a Bretonizing Breton.” Atavistic Celticism also explains Bédier’s gravitation toward medieval studies.216 Twenty years later Jérôme Tharaud eulogized Bédier at the Académie in similar terms, emphasizing the primacy of the Celtic and the negligible impact of the colonial on both Bédier and France.217 While for metropolitans Bédier’s Breton origins protected his national identity from tropical contamination, for creoles the survival of pure Bretons defined Bourbon’s prestige. According to Bourbon’s elites, creole culture could generate all on its own the salient qualities of a “Bretonizing Breton.”

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In the fully Francocentric view of elite creoles, the “grande patrie” was as much their homeland as the “petite patrie” of Bourbon. For Bédier, Paris comes both before and after Bourbon— at once home and exile, origin and destination (in Saint-Denis, he lived just steps from the Rue de Paris). He embraced Paris as “home” by making it a measure of cultural value, whether assessing his own career, judging the accents of his students, or working on the dictionary of the Adadémie Française.218 Bédier’s identification with the metropole comes across vividly in his praise of Paris during the celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of the Collège de France in 1931.219 Between the lines of Bédier’s address to the city, though, one can also read a veiled memory of creole migration: Paris, it’s an air one breathes, so vivifying that the man who finds himself suddenly plunged into it, whatever his profession, feels, with joy, the rhythm of his life accelerate. Paris, it’s for everyone the school of all modesty, for no one can travel the streets who doesn’t recognize himself the contemporary of all that has been grand in our country and who doesn’t learn in this same way to measure his own smallness. But, more particularly, for the man of the library or the laboratory, Paris, it’s the salutary invitation to tear himself away from himself and from the pride of his ivory tower in order to enrich, not his technical specialty, but his soul, in order to escape precisely from the peril of being only a specialist, therefore half a scholar. Paris, it’s the entrance into contact with all the elevated ways of understanding life.220 Parisian air is an omnipresence that enters the body, transforming everyone, regardless of race or nationality. Plunged into this air in 1881, Bédier feels an acceleration that disrupts his habitual rhythms. In the same breath, he enters a wrinkle in time that imposes a double-warping of perspective: he sees the immensity of the past as his contemporary, and equal, at the same time that he observes his own relative smallness in the middle of the metropolitan street. In this vertiginous space, various monuments and buildings place the colonial and the medieval in close proximity.221 Paris thus invites Bédier to leave specialization behind (be it scholarly or colonial) and embrace a transcendental understanding of national life. Unlike the “magnetic waves” of creole telepathy, which reach everywhere but

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affect only creoles, the air affects everyone in a delimited space regardless of origin. In this contrast of metaphors, Bédier captures the split between the colonial particularities of race and region and the universalizing ideals of the Republic — a split whose two sides condition his national identity. Bédier’s geography of national belonging ultimately includes not only Paris, Bourbon, and Brittany, but also the Dauphiné—the region of his wife’s family (he is buried in her village, Le-Grand-Serre, near Valence). At the time of his election to the Académie, Bédier identified the Dauphiné— not Paris, where he actually lived—as his continental home.222 He thus adopts the path to national belonging consecrated by Barrès and others— deep roots in “la France profonde.” Unwavering attachment to a provincial “petite patrie” promised to protect both individual morals and national strength. Indeed, Bédier long considered himself a “provincial” metropolitan. Just after his 1887 trip to Bourbon, he commented to Gaston Paris on his “enduring” attachment to the provinces, and unease in Paris: “It must be said that I always/still [toujours] enjoy the provincial life, that the only thing I like about Paris is your courses, and that I hope for nothing more for next year, upon my return to France, than to live in the provinces.”223 Paris remains, after six years, an alien urban experience; en province, Bédier finds places most closely continuous with his insular sensibilities. These comments of course contradict the allegiance he pledges to life in Paris less than a year later.224 The various locales that Bédier calls “home”—provincial, colonial, Parisian—testify to his deeply divided sense of national place. Exile shapes Bédier’s expressions of creole identity throughout his life, from his letters around the 1887 journey to Bourbon to speeches in the 1920s and 1930s. As he reflects on the meaning of personal history, he values continuity above all. Thus, Bédier’s supposed affirmation that “What is no more never was”225 expresses not disinterest in the past but an ideology of permanence: what is valuable has survived and so still exists; what no longer exists is rightfully forgotten. Bédier embraces this principle of cultural Darwinism concisely in a citation from Horace that he invoked throughout his life: “Caelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt” [They change their sky, not their soul, those who range across the sea].226 Regardless of migration, the soul remains immovable. Proclaiming his complete emotional identification with this line (“I know only too well the melancholic and sometimes painful feeling”),227 Bédier interprets Horace to address the

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soul’s attachment to home, an attachment fraught with pain when one must live or travel elsewhere. In one memorable instance—on a photo sent to his lycée after his election to the Académie—Bédier translated the Latin citation into Creole: “Quant i sa va l’aut’ coté la mer, l’ ciel i çanze, le coer i çanz’ pas” [When one goes to the other side of the sea, the sky changes, the heart changes not] (Figure 32).228 The Creole phrase affirms continuity, underscoring the exile’s faithful attachment to Bourbon and France (both are “the other side of the sea”). The doubling of Latin with Creole, moreover, affirms a continuity between past and present, Rome and the French colony. On a photo of himself sent to Bourbon, the phrase reminds those who remember Bédier that he also remembers them. Bédier expressed poignant appreciation for another poet of exile, the sixteenth-century Joachim Du Bellay. Bédier taught Du Bellay’s Regrets early in his career, and later cited one of its most famous poems to express his own “instinctive” devotion to France: “France, mother of arts, arms, and laws!” [France, mère des arts, des armes et des lois!].229 Du Bellay wrote the Regrets while “exiled” in Rome—but his greater trauma may have been his return “home” to Paris, which reinforced his sense of distance from his provincial origins in the Loire: Du Bellay is as attached to his pays [province, regional identity] as to his patrie [national identity].230 His poetry expresses a sense of permanent “exile” regardless of location and a perpetually ambivalent relation to the homeland: from the perspective of the Loire, life in Paris looks as much like exile as Rome. Bédier’s citation of the sonnet “France, mère des arts” thus projects his own exilic imagination onto a poem more famous for national pride. Yet after the first line, the sonnet descends immediately to regret, as a “lamb” calls out in vain to its formerly nourishing mother, wandering plaintively toward the accusation, “ô cruelle” (l. 6). Emotionally wounded and exposed to mortal danger by the mother’s silence, the lamb’s last words condemn as unjust the security enjoyed by other members of the flock: “And yet I am not the worst of the flock” [Si ne suis-je pourtant le pire du troupeau] (l. 14). Neither arts, arms, nor laws will save this piteous creature. The lamb’s alienation is double, for it longs both for a distant time (the earlier moment when the mother provided nourishment) and a distant place (“France,” which no longer answers his calls). In Bédier’s hands, Du Bellay’s poem captures the complexities of creole life in diaspora (exile, migrant, and citizen all at once). It invokes national

Figure 32. Joseph Bédier. Autographed photograph from private archive of Adrien Bédier. Photograph by author, June 2003. Used with permission.

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belonging as both a distant memory and a desired future. The creole, like the lamb, feels abandoned—but usually turns melancholic rather than bitterly accusatory.231 His devotion is a racial trait, carried in his blood. Bédier’s medievalism addresses a similarly fractured relation to the nation, while also tracing a path toward reintegration with the “flock.” The Middle Ages become the vanishing point of temporal and spatial ruptures (an island home left in the past); they offer solace for the tropical heart lodged under cloudy northern skies. When Bédier argues that France exists in a seamlessly continuous relation with its eleventh-century self, he reroots his own identity in an immutable version of the nation that abandons no one.

· CHAPTER 4 ·

Island Philology

B

édier’s creole biography suggests that he turned to the Middle Ages partly in response to the disruptive effects of migration. His scholarship, in turn, refers explicitly to creole memories. As he brings the colonial and the medieval into dialogue, using each to explain the other, he weds exile to philology: both derive from experiences of rupture (in time, space, or both); both function between memory and forgetting. While the poignancy of exile lies in the persistence of the memory of a lost place, philology promises to restore lost forms to contemporary consciousness. For French medieval studies during the Third Republic, philological recovery fortified the nation by stabilizing its language, lineage, and literary history. The products of philology proffered images of continuity and purity that stretched to the nation’s earliest foundational moment (however defined). This nationalist philology, as developed after 1870, generated many influential documents and theories, some still in use today. In this chapter, I elucidate how the widely forgotten facts of Bédier’s creole heritage impinge on the practice of French medieval studies. Bédier’s scholarly references to Bourbon signify within the combined contexts of philology, nationalism, and colonialism. While in the previous chapters I discussed general interactions between medievalism and colonialism, here I elaborate on the technical role of philology. As a method of textual analysis, philology created the seamless continuities so coveted by nationalists and colonialists alike. Philology could regularize grammar, smooth over gaps in the documentary record, and turn strange forms into familiar words. Its powers to “purify” languages and texts legitimized national and imperial ambitions.1 Philology also relied directly on colonialist metaphors. The German classicist August Boeckh, for example, defined philology as a form of domination: “First and foremost, it is the task of reproducing all that alien thought so that it becomes mine, so that nothing external or alien remains. . . . At the same time, however, the task of philology is to dominate what it has thus reproduced, in such a way that, · 117 ·

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though it has been made mine, appropriated to myself, I can still hold it before me like an object . . .”2 Boeckh describes a totalizing obliteration of differences through philological conquest, every historical detail assimilated into a single object of possession. Although a classicist of the first half of the nineteenth century, Boeckh captures succinctly the aggressive stance on difference that characterized romance philology into the twentieth century (and sometimes still does). Bédier famously broke with the editorial methods of German philologists like Boeckh. When he began his career, the most widely accepted editing method derived from the work of Karl Lachmann, whose “critical method” involved combining different surviving manuscripts into a composite construction of the text’s “original” form. This process requires grouping manuscripts into “families”: all those deemed copied from a common original belong together; comparisons within and between families reveal the form of the original. In theory, the editing becomes scientifically mechanical: whenever a majority of the families agree, the editor simply selects their common text. The result would represent the oldest, least corrupt form of the author’s original text (which almost never survives). Bédier expressed skepticism of the “critical method” at the very beginning of his career, later developing a full critique based on the problem of classification: as soon as one began comparing texts, “the notion of the authentic and the primitive becomes confused.”3 Bédier noted that editors almost always organized manuscripts into two families —leaving the ultimate selection of text to their own taste. Since individual taste already drove the editorial process, he reasoned, the editor should select a single manuscript he considered the “best” and then edit with minimal emendation.4 The result would represent a “true” medieval text (rather than a modern composite), however “corrupt” or different from the author’s own creation. By hewing faithfully to single manuscripts, editions could establish continuity with the Middle Ages. Bédier detested the “monstrous hybridity” created by emendation; when possible, he preferred the most purely “French” manuscripts.5 And he could turn even the most seemingly “contaminated” document into a repository of pure French spirit. His “objective science” thus served the aesthetics of “taste” and the politics of prestige. Bédier’s critique of the German model, moreover, gave France its own unique editorial method. As a “national” practice, Bédier’s approach reflects his resistance to mixed forms [mélange, métissage] of all kinds, a distrust that derives partly from his creole formation.

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Through philology, Bédier addressed both historical and personal ruptures. Forging a path from the imperial periphery to the heart of national belonging, he took on some of the fundamental issues underlying the very idea of “nation.” Indeed, he maintained a lifelong intellectual engagement with one of France’s most influential theorists of national identity, Ernest Renan.6 Bédier’s relationship with Renan began when Renan addressed his graduating class at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1883. Renan extolled the virtues of rational science, denigrated the heavy-handed systems of “barbarism,” cast education as a form of racial determinism, and exhorted the graduates to serve their country.7 These concepts all resonate with Bédier’s creole formation and with the tenets of his later scholarly arguments. He went on to invoke Renan appreciatively throughout his career; through his friendship with the Marquise, he read Renan’s private letters; Renan’s youthful writings appeared posthumously in Bédier’s Revue de France.8 Philology plays a central role in Renan’s generation-forming manifesto on rational method, L’avenir de la science (composed in 1848 but not published until 1890). Renan characterizes philology as the basis of modernity — a critical approach not beholden to morality, positivism, or any predetermined system. The disinterested excavation of detail serves only the absolute production of knowledge; it separates modern science from the greatest achievements of every earlier era.9 Bédier adopted the first sentence of L’avenir de la science as a personal motto almost immediately: in 1893, he wrote to Gaston Paris that he aspired to the intellectual ideal outlined by Renan, as someone who “considers that scientific life is a serious and holy thing, and the only necessary one; and it’s in this sense that Renan wrote on the first page of his most beautiful book this phrase from the Gospel: “Martha, Martha, one thing alone is necessary.”10 The phrase “one thing alone is necessary” alludes to the Gospel of Luke (10:41–42), in which Jesus contrasts Martha’s multiple cares with the singular devotion of her sister Mary. Bédier thus casts his scholarly aspiration as a fabulous spiritualization of rational inquiry, entirely sufficient in and of itself. Bédier turns directly to Renan’s praise of philology in one of his earliest exercises of textual criticism, the Études critiques (1903). Having contrasted philology with the guesswork of “taste,” Bédier uses a full-page citation from Renan as his final statement on the nature of criticism: philology sustains philosophy, for without the careful reconstruction of historical detail no general conclusion can hold.11 A few years later, Bédier proposed

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a book to Marcel Prévost that would have essentially rewritten L’avenir de la science as a handbook of medieval philology: envisioned for a popular audience, the book promised to reconcile the disparate strands of literary criticism into a unified textual science, positing the fundamental “solidarity” of philology and aesthetic appreciation in the tradition of SainteBeuve and Taine. Most importantly, he observed—like Renan—that no generalization (however brilliant) could hold truth without philological detail, and no investigation of minutiae could yield knowledge without an encompassing general view.12 In redirecting Renan’s arguments specifically toward medieval literature, Bédier intended to provide historical depth to Renan’s broader methodological prescriptions. Philology’s reconstructive powers underlie Renan’s other most famous text, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation” [What Is a Nation?]. Delivered at the Sorbonne the year before Bédier’s graduation from Louis-le-Grand, Renan’s speech begins with the medieval origins of the European nations (in the time of Charlemagne). Subsequently, “forgetting,” more than memory, created national cohesion: “The essence of a nation is that all the individuals have many things in common, and also that they have all forgotten many things.”13 This much-cited definition summarizes Renan’s idea that national citizens must forget both their own individual particularities (regional origins, dialects, etc.) and the nuances of historical identities in order to identify as a group. Forgetting erases differences (ethnic, racial, linguistic, etc.) that might otherwise disturb citizens’ sense of collective belonging. The resulting memory fictions project transcendent “Frenchness” through historical time and across geographical spaces. This process of “national” construction resembles closely the ways in which philology constructs “unified” texts out disparate and often contradictory fragments— “forgetting” differences among sources in favor a single coherent version. For both philology and the nation, amnesia goes hand in hand with memory. When Renan writes that every Frenchman has “forgotten” thirteenthcentury massacres in the Midi or the murders of the Saint-Barthélemy (in the sixteenth century),14 he does not imply that the events themselves have been forgotten: they have been reimagined as civil wars rather than remembered as confrontations between distinct groups affiliated with disparate regions and sovereigns. Renan’s phrasing, moreover, assumes that his audience remembers precisely what he claims they have forgotten (“every French citizen must have forgotten”): as Benedict Anderson has pointed out, Renan’s statement only makes sense if his audience knows what hap-

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pened in the Midi or on the Saint-Barthélemy, since Renan himself does not explain.15 The “French” thus share an imagination of shared national events that stretches to “France’s” medieval origins—through the thirteenth century to the eighth (Charlemagne) and even the fifth (the Germanic invasions). In L’avenir de la science, Renan explicitly ties local acts of forgetting to collective acts of memory: remembering a visit to a Breton cemetery, he describes the simultaneity of a “vast silence” and the conviction that memories of the dead will reverberate “eternally”—even when Brittany and France are no more.16 In other words, the forgetting that facilitates the fusion of groups into larger and larger units also, mystically, preserves the memory of earlier histories. The interplay of memory and forgetting in Renan’s conception of national identification parallels their role in Bédier’s own quest for national belonging. He begins his career with a declared desire to forget his colonial past; he even suggests that all creoles endeavor, however unsuccessfully, to forget their homeland.17 By eradicating his memories of Bourbon, Bédier seeks to secure his sense of belonging to France and his identity as a philologist. Yet memory more than amnesia ultimately shapes both. Indeed, Bédier concludes one of his last publications with the conviction that “Mnémosyne” [Memory] should be venerated above all other muses.18 Not coincidentally, he introduces this thought with an extended citation from Renan on how hierarchies of historical value result from critics’ selfinterest: they egocentrically find their own topics of study more worthy than others. Bédier’s ultimate point also concerns the fictional nature of historical value: he presents his own conviction that French national literary history begins in the eleventh century as a consciously created “myth.”19 Renan made the same point in “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation”: citizens and historians alike forget disruptive details in favor of ordered memory fictions that guarantee clear origins and coherent developments. Renan and Bédier both understand memory as a construct that serves the narrative needs of the nation. In practice, Bédier’s philology actively combines recovery (memory) and erasure (forgetting). His persistent evocations of Bourbon within these arguments reveal how effectively memory comforts amnesia. Bédier’s commitment to serve France through a philology founded on the strategic forgetting of his own “difference” makes his medievalism deeply national. Like his predecessors who nationalized medieval studies in the immediate aftermath of 1870, he used philology to confirm rather

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than challenge national unity, effectively sidestepping the dangers that Renan identified in historical research (the recovery of discordant memories could impede national cohesion). Bédier actively promoted the myth that “France” emerged fully formed in the eleventh century (Renan posited tenth-century origins, but only because he understood the epic as older).20 Bédier based this theory on the “amnesiac” powers of the literary “masterpiece”: “Every literature begins with a masterpiece and it has no history.”21 Produced by an individual of genius “in a sacred minute,”22 the “masterpiece” creates the aesthetic values that define the nation’s cohesion and subsequently never change. This immutable national essence ensures that modern critics can recognize the masterpieces of previous eras: all great works share the same aesthetic values. Promoting the reintegration of medieval literature into the national conscience, Bédier affirmed that the nation, “une et indivisible” as Republicans define it, already exists in medieval chronicles: generations of Frenchmen have recognized themselves among these ancestors.23 In the interest of national literary history, Bédier even defended the use of German methods: it may be “humiliating” to have foreigners unearth the secrets of France’s ancestral culture, but the French could still use the results to fortify themselves. Bédier himself was ultimately credited with giving France access to its own history.24 Bédier’s theory of the foundational “masterpiece” assumes the nation’s immutability and self-sufficiency. His historical explanations, accordingly, rely frequently on analogies, positing transparent similarities across millennia. He affirms, for example, that: medieval romance is only worth appreciating if it remains readable today and can inspire new works of art (1891); twelfth-century taste works just like modern salons (1896); people in the past must have reasoned very much like us (1911); writers must have corrected themselves just as we do (1913); medieval poets needed impresarios just like modern dramatists (1921); the best medieval literature is just like Corneille and Racine (1913, 1921); and writers have “always, in all countries” sought profit (1928).25 Through analogy, Bédier projects a transcendent coherence across all of French literary history. The best criticism, he concludes, speaks the “language of hypnotism”: critics need to identify with their subjects or they become detached — victims of “systems” rather than servants of ideas.26 In support of this idea, Bédier cites Jean-Marie Guyau’s L’art au point de vue sociologique (1889). Guyau’s book begins with an account of “sympathetic pain” in experimental hypnosis (where a hypnotized subject feels injuries inflicted on another person). Guyau’s

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argument, like Bédier’s, concerns aesthetics: sympathetic identification determines aesthetic effect; the convincing critic “vibrates” in sympathy with the work of art.27 Bédier turns this principle toward history, although with the paradoxical twist that successful identification with the past blocks improper anachronisms: through critical “sympathy,” the philologist avoids importing the modern into the medieval.28 By making identification the height of critical achievement, Bédier imagines himself—a successful creole critic —as heir to cultural transmissions that have passed unbroken through centuries and across oceans. Bédier’s reflections on sympathy derive partly from the legacies of romanticism. In championing identification with the past, he could easily be mistaken for Jules Michelet or other romantic historians.29 Romantic scholarship concentrates on the “origins” of identity—distant and previously silent pasts. As romantic historians reestablish hidden histories of continuity between past and present, they also attend to the acute singularity of individual phenomena—to ruptures and discontinuities. Two of the anchors of romantic historiography, Michelet and Edgar Quinet, frequently refer to forgetting as constitutive of seamless historiographic memory.30 Michelet expresses the paradoxes of romantic historiography when he comments that the Middle Ages were a “simple” time, but one that he can understand by looking deeply within himself.31 Bédier thus translates major tenets of romantic historiography when he combines identification, permanence, and foundational rupture (the masterpiece with no history).32 Throughout his career, Bédier identified overtly with romantic sensibilities. At the very beginning of his thesis research, he sought historical explanations for his personal belief in the timeless beauty of medieval literature; in a later note, he elaborated this nascent principle of historical identification: “one must plunge body and soul into the works’ period to taste their charm, which is both ephemeral and immortal.”33 Bédier gives his idea an explicitly romantic formulation in one of his last publications: “The beautiful work reveals its beauty only in its own climate, in its landscape. The secret, Goethe unveiled it: ‘Whoever wants to understand the poet, let him go first to the land of the poet.’ ”34 Latching onto an iconic figure of German romanticism, Bédier embraces identification with the national past as a deep expression of the self, rooted in a landscape of permanence. Bédier, however, is more commonly known as a vigorous antiromantic: he displaced romantic Germanophilia and folk creativity in favor of

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Francocentrism and individual genius.35 While working on the Légendes épiques, he wrote to the Marquise that romanticism opposed “reason” itself.36 Indeed, he opens the book with the stark intent to lay siege to the “romantic burg [fortress] of systems.”37 Burg nationalizes the argument, making German romantics responsible for artificial “systems” that deform truth. Yet in the book’s third volume, Bédier concedes, “We have retained the essence of their doctrine: wrongly or rightly, we still participate in their spirit, and, if you like, their romanticism.”38 Similarly, in editing texts of the Tristan legend, Bédier pursued a (romantic) restoration of a lost original text while (antiromantically) attributing that original to a single creative individual rather than to the “instinctive and unconscious” collaboration of the folk.39 His Roland evidences a similar duality: he broke with the romantic goal of reconstructing the poem’s original form, yet affirmed, romantically, that national tradition had continued unchanged since the French author had written down the poem. Bédier, in other words, displaced the time of origin but not the principle of beginnings, the genius of the heroic individual, or their joint value to the modern nation. Corbellari notes that Bédier did not so much reject romantics’ nationalism or the cult of origins as their approach to writing.40 In the end, Bédier’s historicism remains riven by paradox: “No one shows more romantic enthusiasm than Bédier in renouncing romantic enthusiasm.”41 Even these paradoxes bring Bédier close to the romantics: Renan, for example, defined himself as “a romantic protesting against romanticism.”42 Bédier may use philology differently than the romantics, but his nationalism remains fundamentally contiguous with theirs. Driven by historical sympathy and national interests, Bédier cannot conceive of the value of studying cultures other than his own. Indeed, much of his scholarship aims to discredit theories of foreign influences on French literature.43 His outlook partly followed that of his teacher Brunetière, who wrote, “The time of literary perfection lasts about as long as a literature’s independence in relation to foreign literatures.”44 In a similar spirit, Bédier took pains to identify the basically “national” character of the book written by his friend Texte — about Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s literary cosmopolitanism: Bédier dismisses the content in favor of an appreciation of Texte’s “French” method and personality.45 Bédier, in other words, discerns in Texte’s book the opposite of what Texte himself argued. For Bédier, “exotic” influences (from England or Germany in this case) could not affect the essence of the French national spirit; French genius could

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not derive from any kind of “mixing.” Ultimately, and ironically, Bédier’s commitment to the “system” of national literature overrides all evidence to the contrary. With the nation as the focal point of his criticism, Bédier joins the tradition of nationalist medievalism that developed in the aftermath of 1870, despite his rather different approach to the study of origins. His nationalism, however, also derives from his creole formation. For rather different reasons but to similar ends, nationalist medievalism and creole patriotism affirm national purity, historical continuity, and the singularity of France itself. In a paradox that parallels Bédier’s critical philosophy, elite creoles claimed a privileged closeness to the French nation on the basis of their formation far from France. Bédier’s scholarly references to Bourbon underscore the island’s identity as a “second France,” a perfect iteration of the metropole that happens to be located in the Indian Ocean. They also import the baggage of creole chivalry and racialism into the origins of medieval culture. At the same time, Bourbon brings medieval genres (the fabliaux, romance, and epic) into dialogue with colonial culture. Each of the publications that mobilizes Bédier’s creole memory— Les fabliaux (1893), Le roman de Tristan et Iseut (1900), Les légendes épiques (1908–13), La chanson de Roland (1922–37)—contributes substantially to Bédier’s elaboration of a “purified” history of France, one devoid of foreign influences and virtually unchanged since its origins. While this theory of literary history rests overtly on philological arguments, it also derives from colonial experiences—experiences that preceded Bédier’s training in philology. In both his colonial imaginary and his scholarship, Bédier entertains a paradoxical balance between rupture and continuity, individuality and collectivity, memory and amnesia. As he engages creole memory, he shapes a national literary history out of an exilic imagination. Les fabliaux

Bédier’s doctoral thesis, Les fabliaux, critiques theories of origins in order to rid French comic tales of foreign influences. When Bédier began his study, critics sought to explain the tales’ origins through comparative analysis, and most argued that they spread to Europe from India through a series of direct influences. Bédier, for his part, rejected both the comparative method and the thesis of Indian origins. Throughout the Fabliaux, he expresses annoyance at being “brought back to India.”46 He methodically

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blocks the “caravan of tales” that Gaston Paris saw traveling from the banks of the Ganges to the banks of the Seine.47 He also ridicules the methods of comparative anthropology, which used evidence from contemporary tribal culture to explain ancient Europe: “Here it’s a ancient totem, there a tabou, and to explain these marvels, one must sometimes look to the Bassoutos [of South Africa], the Hurons [of Canada], the Kamchadales [of Siberia].”48 Bédier here rejects the colonialist medievalism prevalent in the late nineteenth century. Rather than looking to the time when “the ancestors of the Germans resembled the Zoulous,” Bédier posits the futility of the very idea of a single origin.49 Instead, he argues that comic tales exist in many different places — Antiquity, France before the Crusades, India, Africa, Brittany, Germany, etc. Bédier refuses, in other words, to see India or anywhere else as the source of French literature. Bédier’s outrage at the idea that French literature originated in India is scientific, patriotic, and also colonial. In the tradition of nationalist medievalism, he blames German scholars for extending a relatively modest French theory to monstrous proportions.50 Equally important for a native of Réunion from a prominent family involved in conquering and administering French Indochina, the Indianist theory granted cultural privilege to a newer colony seen as subordinate and distant from French values. French India also competed with Réunion for scarce metropolitan resources. Bédier’s adolescent years on Réunion, moreover, coincided with a period of substantial migration from British India under indentured labor agreements, almost all passing through Saint-Denis.51 These arrangements signaled an “embarrassing” dependence on a rival empire. Indian immigration led metropolitans to associate Réunion with “orientalism,” which, in the eyes of elite creoles, distanced the island from the privileges that should accrue to their faithfully French society. To combat this reputation, the organizers of the Réunion pavilion for the colonial exposition of 1931 minimized the visibility of Indian culture; Marius Leblond (in his own assessment of fabliaux) claimed that Réunion’s own popular tales imitated Horace and La Fontaine, owing nothing to Indian sources.52 The derivation of French national literature from India posed, in short, a sharply colonial question: Bédier’s theory erased any signs that France had ever depended on “inferior” colonies for inspiration. In his arguments against the Indianists, Bédier posited that contacts between cultures play a minimal role in literary creation.53 Rather, different cultures spontaneously and independently produce similar stories. Bédier’s

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proof of this theory of “polygenesis” rests partly on a tale from his own imperial experience. Toward the end of his refutation of Indian origins, he recounts a story from his trip back from Bourbon:54 In the month of October, 1887, at the level of Cap Gardafui, on the steamship the Yarra of the Australian line, I heard stories told. The narrator was a old inhabitant of Mauritius, who was leaving his island for the first time. He told, among other tall tales, the story of a certain examination that a father makes his three daughters pass in order to see which one of them needed to be married first. The tale, which it is impossible for me to analyze more precisely, is a fabliau. It is likewise impossible for me to say the title of the fabliau, but it can be found in volume V of the collection by Montaiglon and Raynaud, under the number 122. Even though I must have read a hundred collections of Qlp/o_´ bf_ [bawdy tales], I have never encountered this tale anywhere else, and I doubt if it’s ever been written since the thirteenth century. The old Mauritian planter, however, told it like a [medieval] jongleur, without adding or cutting a single episode. I asked him where he had gotten his story, and I received the response well known to collectors of tales: “Who knows? I heard it told just this way, undoubtedly at PortLouis, I don’t know anymore when or by whom.” He was therefore a witness to oral tradition. I noticed then that among the listeners were an English businessman who was from Sydney and a seaman whom we called the Martigaw, because he was from the Martigues. The next day, I heard the Martigaw recount the fabliau to a circle of seamen. The crew was almost exclusively composed of Basques and Corsicans, but the listener who seemed the most amused, and who showed the biggest teeth when he laughed, was an Arab stoker who had just refueled the machine and who, his naked body glistening with sweat, was drinking his minuscule cup of coffee. One can say that, that day, this tale had passed from the Mascarene Islands to the Basque country, to Corsica, to Australia, to Arabia. Besides which, on the ship itself, it could have passed further to the Chinese boys and the Piedmont [Italy] laborers who were coming back from Bourbon, the Arab could have told it in Aden, the Martigaw in Provence, a Corsican in Bastia. Collectors of tales who perhaps, in these last five years, have gathered this story in Aden or

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in Moka [Yemen], in Marseille, in Dax [southwestern France], will compare gravely these versions that they’ll proclaim Arab, Provençal, Basque, and they’ll look for the laws of propagation of this tale. What likelihood that they’ll ever be discovered?55 Cap Gardafui forms the tip of present-day Somalia, and marks the boundary between the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Moving through this geographic nexus of east and west, south and north, Bédier hears a medieval tale. His own telling is fraught with contradiction. While he identifies the tale’s genre and date with precision, its linguistic form remains entirely unclear: the Mauritian could have spoken French, Creole, or English (Mauritius, formerly Ile de France, was captured by the English in 1810). The description of the audience does little to clarify, since Bédier mentions both an English speaker (the businessman from Australia) and a French speaker (the seaman from Martigues, near Marseille). The languages of transmission are even less clear when the Provençal seaman repeats the tale to Basques, Corsicans, and an Arab—and Bédier goes on to imagine Chinese and Italian listeners (who could have spoken Piedmontese or Occitan). As a parable of literary transmission, then, the account hardly inspires confidence. The only two people who understood the story for sure are the Martigaw and Bédier: the other transmissions are entirely imagined. What’s more, Bédier himself does not repeat the tale, referring readers by number to the published edition (after having shifted into the present tense of oral story telling). His silence arises not only from gentlemanly propriety, which prevents him from repeating the tale’s title, “Trial of the Cunts” [Le jugement des cons].56 It also enables Bédier to stand outside the stream of narrative that flows simultaneously from the Indian Ocean and the Middle Ages, a stream shaped by multiple colonial histories. By not repeating the tale, Bédier keeps the Euro-French version firmly on French soil. His double-processing of memory (one conditioned by colonial experience, one by scholarly study), however, suggests the impossibility of actually disentangling the lines of transmission: it becomes difficult to say which came first, the medieval tale or the Mauritian. In this sense, Bédier’s anecdote “proves” polygenesis. While Bédier’s anecdote ostensibly supports his thesis that the fabliaux have no single origin, he actually does describe a linear transmission process. The Arab, Australian, Corsican, Chinese, and Italian versions of the tale that Bédier imagines do in fact have a single origin—the Mauritian

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planter. The problem of the tale collectors whom Bédier ridicules is not so much they are wrong to seek the tale’s origin but that they lack sufficient information to find it. They specifically lack the imperial imagination that could trace people from such disparate places to a single location, a single conversation, in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, Bédier’s insistence on the tale’s exact conformity with the medieval French tale implies that the Mauritian version extends, unchanged, a direct line of transmission from medieval France. Could the tale indeed have traveled directly from France to Ile de France, just as it was now clearly returning to France? Upon closer inspection, then, Bédier’s anecdote profoundly contradicts the thesis he wishes to support.57 The anecdote actually shows potentially broad propagation (in both time and space) from a potentially single source. The contradictory nature of the anecdote, which both proves and disproves Bédier’s thesis, reveals the strategic nature of his insertion of colonial explanation into medieval literary history. Bédier’s anecdote demonstrates the remarkable continuity of French culture (stretching from the thirteenth century to the late nineteenth, from the metropole to a distant former colony). It also illustrates how casually cultural material can pass from one “national” context to another. Bédier concludes that it suffices for two people knowing the same language to meet, anywhere, for stories to take root in new contexts. He characterizes his surprising encounter aboard the Yarra as proof that popular tales belong wherever they are repeated: “The homeland [patrie] of tales is not where they are born, but where they are comfortable.”58 This conclusion echoes the famous phrase of Roman imperialism, “ubi bene ibi patria” [where you prosper, you’re home]. Bédier’s commitment to fixed identities, however, belies this flexibility. His theory of “polygenesis” actually relies on clearly distinguishable (and unchanging) cultural traits: “India invents Indian tales, France French tales, Armorica Celtic tales, Zoulouland Zoulou tales.”59 Covering both the French and British empires, Bédier’s examples isolate cultural groups from one another —and project an identifiable “French” culture into the distant past. Medieval crusaders, he continues, encountered both Arabs and other Europeans overseas, but their respective cultures — and popular tales — remained unchanged by the experience. The contradictory anecdote from the Yarra thus supports a fundamentally contradictory thesis: on the one hand, tales do have specific origins (however invisible to later observers); on the other, they migrate freely such that their origins cease to carry meaning. Aboard the

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Yarra, the passengers remain identified with their homelands; the ship itself is no patria even though tales are being invented there. Despite Bédier’s claim that tales reroot themselves wherever they find a comfortable home, his overall approach remains deeply nationalist. Indeed, his thesis extends the patriotic medievalism undertaken by Charles Lenient. Like Bédier, Lenient complained of being “taken back to India” by German scholars (“charlatans érudits” studying the origins of the epic). Lenient actually mocks the motto of Roman imperialism (“ubi bene ibi patria”), countering with the example of French colonial settlers who remain faithful to their homeland even after generations of life overseas.60 This approach to faithful national identity coincides fully with Bédier’s conception of creole identity. In the Fabliaux, Bédier cites Lenient’s popular La satire en France au moyen âge (1859, 1877, 1883) to define the fabliaux’s “esprit gaulois” as a quintessentially French national trait. Lenient, in line with the “decolonization” of the French Middle Ages after 1870, treats “Gaul” as a synonym for “France.”61 The fabliaux’s Gaulish dimension represents yet another way in which the genre, in Bédier’s analysis, lends credence to the deep historical formation of a continuously national literature. Bédier’s thesis on polygenesis largely succeeded in displacing genealogical approaches to textual filiation. The question of the fabliaux’s “IndoAryan” origins has largely fallen from prominence (although the comparative mythology of Georges Dumézil still attracts adherents). The study of the fabliaux today is more likely to concern eroticism, economics, humor, or manuscript collections. On one level, this shift in scholarly interest merely reflects general twentieth-century critical trends. On another level, though, Bédier contributed to severing the genre from ethnographic historiography. Having set aside the question of origins, he turns in the second half of his book to literary questions. Scholars have since pursued any number of ingenious topics, yet arguably many studies still fall within the general parameters Bédier defined: historical setting (such as class relations and audience) and literary representation (especially women, marriage, and religion).62 Bédier accomplished this shift largely by insulating French literature from outside influences: the medieval fabliau and the Mauritian jongleur may tell the same tale, but they have nothing to do with each other. Bédier’s “decolonization” of the fabliaux (through the rejection of Indian origins and an emphasis in Gaul) also “colonizes” them as pure French forms.

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Bédier’s “nationalization” of the fabliaux was immediately criticized by Brunetière, in ways that are still useful: Although not resembling in every way those of our European women, are the dreams of a negress, in the Sudan, less feminine? And subjected to the same necessities, exposed to the same challenges, do the needs and ambitions of a Chinaman differ very much from ours?63 Brunetière counters Bédier’s refusal to compare tales with an openness to cultural communication, and an appeal to common humanity. Although this projection of universality can lead to oppressions and misprisions of its own, it usefully resists Bédier’s Francocentrism and racial ontology. To the extent that critics today treat the fabliaux as “French” literature, they work within paradigms that isolate the genre from global migrations. Setting aside analogues that may persist around the world, or traces of multiculturalism within the French-language versions, means acquiescing in part to the formations of colonial philology. Tale-tellers like the Mauritian did travel; his tale may indeed have taken root in Aden. While specific origins usually lie beyond our view, and the broad sweep of comparative Indo-European mythology raises more questions than it answers, judicious comparisons might yet reveal new literary and cultural histories. Regardless of the approach, fabliaux study can engage the tales’ contradictory imperial formations. The Mauritian planter made at least one return trip to the Indian Ocean: Bédier’s Fabliaux arrived on Bourbon in May 1893, to the delight of his mother and stepfather.64 Although the book could not inspire the further propagation of tales (since Bédier tells hardly any), it could reassure a colony far from the metropole of its closeness to France. Bédier’s proclaimed conviction that the Mauritian jongleur provided an absolutely faithful performance of medieval oral tradition could strengthen creoles’ belief in their own fidelity to France: the preservation of ancient traditions underwrites creole claims to special treatment within the empire. Bédier’s parallel argument, moreover, that cultures can create similar tales even without direct lines of transmission, provides a second (if contradictory) support for creole privilege: even cut off from France, Bourbon can produce literature that resembles metropolitan aesthetics. Finally, to the extent that

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Bédier’s insight derives from colonial memory and a formative experience shaped by colonial economies (all the reasons that people of such vastly different origins found themselves traveling on a ship across the Indian Ocean), global imperialism shaped the historiography of medieval France. Tristan et Iseut

Even before Bédier began his thesis on the fabliaux, he published a comparison of French and German versions of the story of Tristan and Iseult— lovers destined for unhappiness and death after Iseult’s marriage to King Mark. Bédier’s 1886 article actually makes two points identical to those developed in the Fabliaux: it is useless to identify the “oldest” version of a story; two authors can independently invent the same details.65 These critical principles lay the groundwork for Bédier’s “nationalization” of the Tristan romance. While for the fabliaux this process involves dismantling theories of Indian origins, for the Tristan materials it involves the denial of Celtic influences, along with the recuperation of the French sources behind texts in other languages. Bédier’s dealings with the Tristan materials exploit philology’s full potential to comfort national identity through the construction of coherent memory fictions. They also fall under the persistent shadow of creole longing. Bédier worked primarily to discredit the widely held idea that the surviving Tristan materials derived from Celtic sources. His main argument presages his approach to nationalizing the Roland: the French Tristan et Iseut has a single source —the French author of genius who first conceived it; all evidence to the contrary represents corruption by less talented writers.66 He argued further that passionate love did not exist in Celtic culture.67 Much later, he published a popular article whose title condenses his position succinctly: “The legend of Tristan and Iseult is essentially French” [La légende de Tristan et Iseut est essentiellement française]. By insulating the French materials from “foreign” influences, Bédier established a centrist and monolingual literary history. When he elaborated this approach in the Histoire de la littérature française illustrée, Breton reviewers objected strenuously.68 For Bédier, regional autonomy threatened France’s sacred unity; local traditions (be they Breton, Provençal, or any other) contributed nothing substantial to national literature. This approach extends the broader “colonialist” aggressions of republican reforms: Brittany had sustained one of France’s strongest regional cultures, and lost the most to the

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consolidations of the Third Republic.69 Paradoxically, creole claims to imperial privilege rested partly on the promotion of Celtic heritage (“a Bourbonnais with blond hair and blue eyes,” as Bédier said).70 Bédier’s embrace of colonial Celticism thus purifies creole lineages, while his resistance to medieval Celticism purifies national origins. Both moves connect republican France to an idealized history that “forgets” the many ways in which métissage has shaped the nation. Bédier imposes a similar homogeneity on the fragmented corpus of Tristan manuscripts. Contrary to his attack on single origins in the Fabliaux, Bédier argues for a single “ur-Tristan” romance written prior to the surviving text from “Thomas” (itself the source of all other surviving versions, according to Bédier). To convey the original form, Bédier produced an admittedly “composite” text.71 The result includes both edited manuscript fragments and conjectural reconstructions in modern French (the “edition” actually contains proportionally few pages of medieval French).72 Having “restored” the romance, Bédier measures the surviving texts against it, concluding that even Thomas’s text falls far below the aesthetic perfection of the French original, his Anglo–Norman dialect blocking access to the author’s own language (which Bédier considered comparable to Racine’s).73 Obliged to make due with a “best” manuscript in Anglo-Norman, Bédier strives to purify its forms: Thomas’s phonetics are “remarkably pure,” his inflections “remarkably regular”; the language is actually quite close to continental French: “his phonetics contains hardly any colorings or traces of Anglo-Norman.”74 These linguistic arguments support Bédier’s broader conclusion that Anglo–Saxon culture had no influence on Thomas: he may have resided in England but there is no reason to consider him English or for German critics to place him in the “Germanic” tradition.75 In a similar vein, Bédier praised the French culture of his own English translator, Hilaire Belloc: Bédier characterized him as an exemplary French patriot because he lauded the Roland, the Crusades, and contemporary French colonialism in North Africa; Belloc, like Fustel de Coulanges, had rid his nation of the “legend” of its debts to Germanic invasions.76 These terms of praise legitimate Belloc as a voice for France, even in the English language. Bédier thus nationalizes the Tristan materials by casting linguistic differences (medieval and modern) as incidental to cultural identity. At the same time that Bédier worked on the editions that brought his arguments to scholarly audiences, he also nationalized the story of Tristan and Iseult through his own modern French narrative. The Roman

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de Tristan et Iseut (1900) offered the French public a “native” version to rival the popularity of Wagner’s German opera Tristan und Isolde (which premiered in Paris in 1899).77 In the process, Bédier turned the surviving manuscript fragments into a coherent narrative of aesthetically integrated episodes — in a style that became a model of elegant French.78 Throughout, he suppresses elements of savagery and sexuality that might indicate “primitive” influences, opting instead for a classicizing style that enhances courtly manners, reduces ambiguities, and unifies tone.79 These methods are meant to “recover” the lost original. Indeed, the early editions of Bédier’s romance variously characterize it as a “restoration,” “renewal,” and “reconstitution” [restauré, renouvelé, reconstitué]. All of these terms cast the text as a repair for the distortions wrought by the accidents of history. Bédier accomplishes this transhistorical performance of a French national literary aesthetic through deep identification with the medieval sources. In a draft of his preface, he writes that he sought “historical and critical sympathy,” “impregnating” himself with the authors’ color and style.80 Gaston Paris ratifies this performance of historical sympathy in his own preface: Bédier has composed a twelfth-century poem at the end of the nineteenth century.81 Bédier seals his sympathetic voicing of historical feeling by concluding the romance in the first person: Lords, the good poets of yesteryear, Béroul and Thomas, and my lord Eilhart and master Gottfried, told this tale for those who love, not for anyone else. They send you, through me, their greetings.82 Bédier makes himself the conduit of a transhistorical telepathy—connecting himself to medieval sources just as he later envisioned himself connected to all creoles (see chapter 3). Speaking literally on behalf of medieval authors (and treating the German sources as identical to the French ones), Bédier places himself in a continuous line of transmission, much like the Mauritian jongleur — heir to a lengthy tradition and also an autonomous inventor of a tale that will have a life of its own. Bédier’s historical “sympathy” engendered a philology tied more to his sense of absolute “truth” than to the actual evidence of documents. Indeed, Bédier replaced a short passage in his Tristan et Iseut that he had actually translated with an extensive dialogue of his own invention because “to my mind, it’s the original form of the episode, even though no text conserves

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it; it alone satisfies the spirit.”83 The “true” text here is not the one documented in surviving manuscripts, but the one that best satisfies Bédier’s aesthetic sensibility. Bédier embraces “truth” above philological accuracy in other contexts as well, from situations of relative insignificance (Gaston Paris’s lecture notes) to publications of profound ethical impact (documents related to German war crimes): he averred that his texts could be both false and authentic.84 Bédier returns to the idea of sympathetic truth when asked, on the occasion of his entry into the Académie Française, how he had composed Tristan et Iseut: I believe that old texts have a soul and that it’s useless to waste one’s time deciphering them if one does not feel one’s soul in sympathy with them . . . there should not be any difference between the work of the scholar and that of the novelist.85 In startlingly frank terms, Bédier conflates objectivity and subjectivity, analysis and imagination. Indeed, his “edition” of Thomas’s Tristan, with its long passages of modern French, deserves to be called a “novel” almost as much as Tristan et Iseut. Bédier’s belief in a lost “original” Tristan romance led him, in the end, to a reconstructive method even more radical than the critical edition. Bédier’s ability to identify with the Tristan story derives not only from his historical imagination but also from his colonial experience. In addition to the general ways in which creole chivalry made Tristan’s story recognizable, Bédier claimed specific inspiration from his life in Saint-Denis. He reportedly told the Mauritian poet Robert Edward Hart in 1930 that he never would have written certain pages of Tristan et Iseut “if I hadn’t once been in love, at age fifteen, with my cousin.”86 Bédier here claims a creole origin for the very language of his romance. His legend of creole love lends credence to Corbellari’s speculation that Réunion inspired Bédier’s enigmatic reference to a “Pays Fortuné” (a term commonly applied to idealized colonial dominions).87 Bédier’s comment on his youthful love also places him in the company of Bourbon’s prominent poets—from Parny to Leconte de Lisle to Dierx — who founded their creativity on the doleful remnants of impossible love stories, usually with their cousins (Hart explicitly compares Bédier to Leconte de Lisle). By basing his “medieval” text on this kind of creole love story, Bédier imports the racialism of creole

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chivalry into the romance of knightly valor and sublime love. These common tropes of medieval literature thereby reveal their own exclusionary effects. Bédier’s personal identification with Tristan’s disappointed love and exile thus mobilizes colonial experience as an explanation for medieval narrative. And since idealized medievalism contributed to creole culture, it becomes difficult to disentangle the lines of transmission that run simultaneously from the Middle Ages and the Indian Ocean. Bédier’s personal story of creole love opens Tristan et Iseut toward the colonial imaginary — and specifically toward its counterpart in tragic love, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie (1788). Although set on Mauritius (Ile de France) and written by a metropolitan, Réunion creoles embraced the novel’s idealized depictions of creole life as their own. The Leblonds and others considered Bernardin’s narrative the prototype for the modern colonial novel.88 Indeed, what Chris Bongie calls Bernardin’s “neopastoral fantasy of global harmony” accords quite directly with the Leblonds’ racialist ideologies.89 Bernardin tells the story of two young children raised in pastoral bliss; colonial and class prejudices disrupt their pure affections and send Virginie into exile in France. Returning to the island after being repudiated by her opportunistic metropolitan family, she perishes in a shipwreck within sight of the shore; Paul dies of heartbreak soon after. This spare summary of the complex narrative suggests its basic affinities with the themes of “impossible love” and exile in Tristan et Iseut. Virginie, like Iseult, is praised as a “faithful lover” (183, 187); Paul, like Tristan, wanders the woods heartbroken (192–93).90 Indeed, many of the epithets that Gaston Paris applies to Tristan et Iseut could easily describe Paul and Virginie: they illustrate the “fated love,” which endures even when “battered by all kinds of storms”; their emotions and speech seem “half medieval, half modern.”91 Bédier’s own connections to Paul et Virginie go beyond those of the average French reader, or even the average creole. Bédier’s father Adolphe had asserted (in the book of family history he wrote for his children) that Bernardin’s models for Paul and Virginie were Paul Thuault de Villarmoy and Virginie Caillot — great-great-uncle and cousin respectively of Adolphe Bédier. According to Adolphe, the two young cousins drowned in the historical shipwreck that inspired Bernardin’s novel.92 He reminds his children that the family dishes bear the arms of Thuault de Villarmoy and that Paul’s portrait hangs at the house of their great-aunt. Although

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in Adolphe’s version Paul and Virginie are not in love with each other, a heartrending love story does surround Virginie’s demise: a young Frenchman on board the ship, “whose name escapes me today, who was going to the Colonies” fell violently in love with Virginie [il se sentit épris pour elle d’un violent amour]. As the ship began to sink, he offered to save her but she refused to remove her clothes; he reached the shore but swam back to try once again to persuade her. Terrified by certain death, she agreed to remove “her most cumbersome clothes” but the next day the sea washed up both of their bodies.93 Thus, according to Adolphe, did Bernardin encounter the core of the drama that concludes his novel: Virginie refuses to remove her clothes in front of a sailor and so drowns; her body is found alone the following day. For Adolphe, the story of Paul Thuault de Villarmoy and Virginie Caillot linked the Bédier family to the origins of what had become the most famous creole narrative of the nineteenth century (among both metropolitans and islanders). Indeed, he enhances the story’s “Bourbonnais” connections in several ways. First, his story lacks the class differences that contribute to Virginie’s death in the novel: Virginie Caillot exhibits even more sensitive virtue than her fictional counterpart, for she refuses to remove her clothing in front of a sympathetic social equal rather than recoiling from an already naked sailor.94 Paul Thuault de Villarmoy and Virginie Caillot appear, moreover, as faithful migrant creoles, just like the Bédiers: both spent a substantial amount of time in France without ever altering their attachments to their island home. Adolphe’s story, like the novel’s, ends at the gravesite on Ile de France: They were each placed in a separate tomb: the two tombstones stand a half-league from the scene of the shipwreck, on the banks of a small stream, one on the right bank, the other on the left bank, in the middle of tufts of bamboo. They are facing one another, in the same form, of the same height, separated by the water that is not even twenty feet wide: no names on the tombstones. This is because the property where they stand belonged, undoubtedly, to Virginie’s family, who had no need to engrave her name on the stone to know who lay there. You will find in my desk two small fragments that I detached from each of the tombstones. The memory of this place will never leave my mind.95

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Adolphe relies here as much on imagined speculation as a novelist . . . or a “restorer” of medieval sources: the tombs remain nameless because they “undoubtedly” lie on the property of the Caillot family; Paul Thuault de Villarmoy “must” have been mentioned more often to Bernardin than Virginie’s would-be rescuer. Instead of identifying Paul and Virginie, the tombstones record the marks of numerous visitors, including Adolphe, who took the liberty of breaking off pieces. The tombs thus serve several narrative functions: they mark “real” history (contrasted with the novel’s “fiction,” which leaves the graves unmarked even by tombstones);96 they materialize the transfer of creole memory to France; they ground creole identity in a dual geography that begins (rather than ends) overseas. Adolphe’s tombstone fragments reference memories both broken and repaired, a phantom history in which the choice between two homelands never arose. Adolphe’s story, with which Bédier was intimately familiar, relates to Tristan et Iseut differently than to Paul et Virginie. Most superficially, Adolphe’s love story unfolds on a ship, like Tristan and Iseult’s (and unlike Bernardin’s). Alongside Bédier’s memory of his own beloved cousin, Bédier lived with the memory of the real and imagined histories of Adolphe’s “Paul” and “Virginie” (perhaps even inheriting the tombstone fragments). Adolphe’s narrative of tragic young love thus provides another source for Bédier’s “sympathetic imagination”:97 the love story of “cousine Virginie” compliments the imaginative riches of the medieval sources. Finally, Adolphe’s book documents the primacy of individual memory in the transmission of cultural knowledge. Adolphe turns fragments of inherited stories into a coherent written narrative —much like Bédier filling in the “missing” links between fragments of the medieval Tristan materials. Adolphe’s singular document, like Thomas’s and Bédier’s, serves as a nodal point between past and future identifications. Even without Bédier’s anecdotal, and belated, linking of Tristan et Iseut to colonial experience, the romance engages Bourbon through its dedication — addressed to Bédier’s stepfather: “A mon cher Du Tertre. Hommage filial. Joseph Bédier” [To my dear Du Tertre. Filial homage. Joseph Bédier]. According to Bédier, Du Tertre provided his stepsons with a model of exemplary citizenship: “the simplicity of devotion, the virile and joyful accomplishment of daily duty, a simple and serious understanding of life.”98 The dedication thus signals an attachment to father and fatherland.

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The emphatic printing of Bédier’s full name, however, reveals a genealogical rupture — filial devotion to a man with a different name. In this case, the rupture coincides with continuity, for Du Tertre is also Bédier’s mother’s maiden name (the stepfather is also a cousin). The doubly continuous and discontinuous family relations implied in the dedication capture anew the dilemmas of always already displaced creole identities. On the island, Du Tertre represented traditionalist creole interests. Elected mayor for three different terms between 1900 and 1914, Du Tertre participated actively in a tumultuous period of island politics. Electioneering on the island almost always generated violence, vote corruption, and partisan manipulations, to which Du Tertre was no stranger.99 His allegiances were primarily to the island’s elite Catholic landowners. Under the influence of his relative De Mahy, he formed an alliance with the métis journalist and colonialist lawyer Lucien Gasparin (Du Tertre’s son and Bédier’s half brother, Maurice, once seconded Gasparin in a duel); after De Mahy’s death, the two became rivals.100 Before his death in 1926, Du Tertre witnessed Gasparin’s election as deputy (in tandem with Auguste Brunet, 1924) on a platform of solid “creole” values that rested on their joint claim to native identity. Bédier’s personal attachment to Du Tertre has little to do with these political connections. Yet the dedication does link Tristan et Iseut to the aspirations of creole republicanism — published in 1900 at the zenith of De Mahy’s career and just as Du Tertre became mayor of Saint-Denis. At this time, Bédier could have honored any number of influential mentors, from Brunetière (to whom he intended to dedicate the first volume of the Légendes épiques101) to Hermann Suchier (to whom he did dedicate that volume). In naming Du Tertre, Bédier instead underscores his closeness to Bourbon, as well as Bourbon’s reassuringly close ties to “ancient” France. Indeed, the dedication forged indelible associations among Bourbon, the Middle Ages, and Bédier: one of his obituaries on the island focused entirely on Tristan et Iseut and Du Tertre.102 Bédier’s affirmation of creole filiation (homage filial) also connects Tristan et Iseut to Réunion’s outsized reputation within the national canon of poetry: with his elegant “novel,” Bédier took his place in the pantheon of writers hailing from the “island of poets”—Parny, Leconte de Lisle, Dierx (see Introduction). As Gaston Paris writes in the first lines of the preface, “It is truly a poem, even though it is written in beautiful and simple prose”;

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Bédier writes as the “worthy continuator” of medieval poets.103 Ultimately, Tristan et Iseut constitutes a literary form of creole medievalism, grounded in the chivalric thinking that shaped so much of elite creole culture and extending the island’s vaunted poetic tradition into the Middle Ages. Tristan et Iseut participates in Bédier’s reflections on the persistence of colonial memory, the primacy of creole identity, and the global reach of medieval France. Tristan et Iseut defined Bédier as a major writer. The romance, along with his war record, formed the primary basis for his election to the Académie Française (1920). To celebrate this honor, his compatriots gave him an ornate desk at which he vowed to work “for France, as a good creole,” for the rest of his life. Made from Bourbonnais woods, the desk featured two large illustrated medallions on the front — one depicting Tristan and Iseult and the other the dramatic peaks of Salazie, “one of the marvels of Bourbon” (and an area where Bédier vacationed in his youth) (Figure 33).104 The desk cannily, if inadvertently, ties together the medieval romance, the creole origins of Bédier’s version, and national import of this fusion (which catapulted Bédier to the highest levels of French prestige). The desk embodies nothing less than the materials that wrought creole medievalism — and that literally sustained it in Bédier’s later years. Throughout these years, Bédier remained engaged with Tristan et Iseut. His dramatic adaptation, begun soon after the romance’s publication in collaboration with his cousin Louis Artus, played twice in 1929 and again in 1934; he also claimed to have planned a film version.105 The modernized narrative has inspired numerous creative artists, from Barrès to John Updike.106 And the romance’s conception of passionate love had a substantial impact on popular and scholarly treatments of the psychology of desire in the European literary tradition.107 By 1980, Bédier’s romance had reached its 576th French edition; translations remain available in numerous languages.108 Only since 1989 has another translation of the medieval sources, based on fragments rather than reconstructions, become available for students.109 Thus, until quite recently, French students read the story of Tristan and Iseult only in Bédier’s version; many still do,110 while English translations of Bédier appear regularly on college-level reading lists in the United States. In my own early experiences of medieval literature, I recall vividly the unnerving discovery that I had written more than one student paper based on Bédier’s text, in complete ignorance of its composite genealogy. The fact that Bédier’s romance still represents “medieval French literature”

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Figure 33. Joseph Bédier at desk from Réunion. Archives départementales de La Réunion, 2Fi47/169. Photograph by G. L. Manuel Frères. All rights reserved.

in various ways, and that it originated partly in a creole love story of the late nineteenth century, testifies to the broad and enduring reach of colonial formations in academic and popular culture. Les légendes épiques

Bédier dated his manuscript of Tristan et Iseut 29 December 1896, claiming to have written the romance in two months while taking a break from editing the medieval sources.111 Earlier, in August, he said that he was working on the first volume of Recherches sur la formation des chansons de gestes — subtitle of the future Légendes épiques; his course that year was on the epic, and he had already taught the Roland in 1893.112 The fact that Bédier’s Tristan work precedes the Fabliaux (with an article in 1886) and interrupts the Légendes épiques (not published until 1908) suggests the importance of viewing his creative and critical activities as continuous reflections on national literary history. Indeed, taking into account the protracted process

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of bringing Tristan et Iseut to the stage, Bédier engaged the romance throughout his life and alongside all his other work (Corbellari considers it the “nerve center” of his scholarship).113 Bédier never gave up on “reconstituting its mutilated original” (contradicting all of his other philological work).114 Despite profoundly different goals, then, all three of Bédier’s major projects (romance, fabliaux, epic) address foundational moments in a nationalized literary history—and in each case creole memories underlie his convictions. The epic genre represents the first founding moment of French literature (predating romance and fabliaux), and as such occupied a privileged place in the historiography of national identity (see chapter 1). Bédier offered the most ambitious arguments yet for rooting the genre firmly in French soil. Together, his Légendes épiques and edition of Roland deploy all the methods already applied to fabliaux and romance: Bédier hypothesizes elite authors of genius, rejects “foreign” influences, recuperates the Anglo–Norman dialect, and rewrites through translation. He thus extends to the epic the same kind of arguments for cultural homogeneity that he made for the fabliaux and the Tristan romance. Since the epic genre carried greater cultural weight than either fabliaux or romance, the Légendes épiques received great popular as well as academic attention, further reinforcing the genre’s political significance. Bédier’s nationalization of the epic targets the dominant theory that the genre originated in oral songs preserved through generations until collected in the texts that remain. This theory of ancient, popular creation implied Germanic influence because the epic would have emerged before the development of distinct “French” and “German” cultures. By contrast, Bédier posited that the surviving epics originated much later with individual poets along pilgrimage routes emanating from Paris. This theory made the epic a solely French creation: “this poetry is entirely ours; it has nothing Germanic; it has nothing but French.”115 Bédier summarized his conclusions succinctly almost two decades after publishing the first volume of the Légendes épiques: “I opposed the theory of [the epics’] ancient, popular, Germanic origins with a theory of their recent, aristocratic, and entirely French origins.”116 For Bédier, the epic marks a founding break with “mere orality” that promises durable national memory. Bédier solidified his belief in elite creation under the influence of Édouard Chavannes, his friend and eventual colleague at the Collège de France. Bédier praised Chavannes, a sinologist, for opposing folklorist

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doctrines and reestablishing the dignity of literary invention: Chavannes’s ideas, first published in 1894, influenced the Légendes épiques by making Bédier see that “popular art” was simply “an impoverishment of art itself.”117 In retrospect, Bédier claimed to have always believed in the unique role of elites in artistic creation: As of my doctoral thesis, devoted to the fabliaux, I focused all my efforts, all my research on historical facts or legends, on national narratives become popular, but which, according to me, and contrary to the romantic theory, emerged originally from the elite.118 Bédier’s rejection of the role of the “people” in the formation of French national literature coincides with his rejection of scholarly romanticism, guilty not only of applying excessively rigid interpretive “systems” to historical materials but of granting too much creative power to the folk. The nation—like Bourbon—relies instead on the creative force of the aristocracy. The formative role that Bédier assigns to pilgrimage also contributes to his nationalization of the epic. His idea that religious sanctuaries sponsored the invention of epics to attract visitors to their shrines distributes “national” sensibility throughout the provinces.119 The map of epic origins, in other words, is already a map of “France.” Medieval France thereby presages the unifying goals of the Third Republic, with regional differences minimized in favor of shared sentiments. The authors of France’s foundational literature have already forgotten, in the late eleventh century, the differences that separate them; even as they promote their local interests [la petite patrie], they contribute to national cohesion [la grande patrie]. Bédier himself traversed the provinces in his research, interviewing peasants and developing a living sociology of ancient national feeling. He suggests in a letter to Philip Becker that “scholarly” and “popular” traditions might not be so different as they usually appear.120 Modern pilgrimage furthered the epic’s nationalization, for the nationalist Catholic revival after 1870 popularized pilgrimage tourism; Pope Pius IX assigned the pilgrims the red cross, symbol of the First Crusade. As Bédier constructed the medieval epic’s pilgrimage geography, villages all over France were producing articles for the popular magazine Le Pèlerin, telling the story of their local shrines and famous medieval pilgrims.121 These modern storytellers performed the same function that Bédier attributed to clerical authors and jongleurs: they strove to attract pilgrims to their shrines. They

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thus reanimated what Bédier understood as France’s geopolitical and literary origins in the eleventh century. The content and timing of Bédier’s research ensured its broad political appeal. Both before and after the war of 1914–18, the Légendes épiques received extensive praise for its rejection of every aspect of Germanic involvement in the French epic. In awarding Bédier the Prix Gobert in 1913, the Académie Française cited specifically his extension of “our national genius.” Partisans of the xenophobic right (Pierre Lasserre, Léon Daudet, Robert Brasillach) praised Bédier effusively, and triumphant anti-German notices of Bédier’s book appeared in the reactionary periodicals Action française and Le Gaulois, among others.122 But Bédier’s admirers crossed the political spectrum, with one of the more virulently anti-German appreciations appearing in La démocratie. And he received warm congratulations from Jaurès for his penetration of “the secret of France’s creative activity at one of its most noble moments.”123 Bédier’s election to the Académie Française in 1920 inspired a new round of appreciations for the Légendes épiques; the intervening war had only heightened the value of the anti-Germanic thesis. Pierre Champion extolled Bédier’s “conquest” of French philology; Henri Lognon his victory over “intellectual barbarism”; Grappe the triumphant spectacle of Becker’s admiration of Bédier’s conclusions; Hanotaux his repression of “the German invasion of this rich domain where it had installed itself so brutally.”124 Receiving Bédier at the Académie, Barthou confirmed the patriotic status of the Légendes épiques, in terms that could apply to Alsace: “you have returned to France what belongs to France.” Indeed, in a posthumous assessment (published in 1945), Karl Michaëlsson considered Bédier’s “degermanization” of French medieval studies his greatest achievement.125 Bédier himself connected his thesis on the epics’ genesis to their enduring impact on national thinking: “they still serve, after so many centuries, to fortify within us our national feeling, Golden Legend of our country.”126 For a number of different reasons, then, Bédier’s book became an emblem of national identity on multiple levels: it purified medieval origins, it refuted German scholars, and it fortified a culture shaken by military defeat. Bédier’s nationalization of the epic also bears a deeply creole logic. Bédier’s Réunionnais compatriots of course appreciated his book for the same nationalist reasons as continental critics, adding distinctly colonial inflections: the German science that Bédier corrected was inappropriately

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“imperialist”; Bédier’s creole culture qualified him more than others to attack Germanism, since creoles preserved the most vigorous roots of the French race itself.127 Bédier’s defense of elite authorship, moreover, strengthened the claims that tied colonial privilege to an aristocratic ideology. And like Fustel de Coulanges, Bédier decolonizes French medieval culture itself: the epic emerges not with the Germanic invasions but with France’s own confident expansion during the Crusades. Finally, the pilgrimage thesis places purposeful migration in the service of national culture: people (like creoles) who travel toward their most “desired” destinations shape the literature most expressive of immutable French values.128 Bédier—who claimed a “pure genealogy” [sans mélange] —thus offers France and Bourbon a national epic without métissage, fit for an ancient global empire. Bédier’s colonial experience directly supports his theory of epic composition. His argument rests on the idea that popular memory survives for only one or two generations: the events that inspired epics would have been forgotten rather than preserved. Bédier “proves” this theory by analogy with his own family memories: A hundred years back . . . we no longer know anything of the past, except what paper has conserved for us. And how would we doubt this, I who write this, you who read me, if it is true that, without family papers, we wouldn’t even be able to name our greatgrandparents, if it is true that we are incapable of identifying, on the walls of our father’s house, the old portraits or even the photos that nonetheless represent our immediate ancestors?129 With the performative “we” of shared experience, Bédier draws readers into a sense of collective loss. As he stares blankly at the anonymous creole faces that decorate his family home, he enjoins everyone to admit the fragility of memory. He then treats family genealogy as a microcosm of national history: What remains today in oral tradition of events much more considerable [than the battle of Roncevaux in 778], of our wars in Algeria, Mexico, or Tonkin? Here and there a patriotic couplet that will be repeated as long as the tune isn’t too out of fashion, a proper name, a vignette.130

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Here, Bédier posits that the events of Charlemagne’s lifetime survived as briefly as modern ones in the popular imagination—and so could not have been the direct source of texts written down centuries later. Bédier gives a colonial inflection to Renan’s theory of national identity: citizens and family members bond more over what they have all forgotten than over what they remember.131 Bédier’s colonial examples, moreover, echo his own family history: One of my great-uncles, in 1809, had his kidney ruptured by a bullet in Madagascar, at Fort-Dauphin; one my direct ancestors served in India under La Bourdonnais;132 people with my name and blood serve today in Cochinchina, in Tonkin, in Sudan, and I know what this handful of Frenchmen, the creoles of Bourbon Island, lost beyond the seas, have given to France in good servants, soldiers, mariners, men of state, industrialist, poets.133 Bédier’s family members participated in the same colonial wars that he compares to Roncevaux. This connection ennobles modern aggression while making France’s oldest epic a celebration of imperial expansion. Since the story of Bédier’s family coincides with imperial history, the Roland looks like a personal archive — the great-uncle in Madagascar heir to Roland. Bédier concludes his reflections on the fallibility of oral transmission with a discussion of the book written by his father —“family papers” designed to preserve memory against the ravages of time: Sometimes in our houses an old sword, a gorget, a cross of honor retain such memories [of our wars], and that’s our domestic folklore: but everyone knows how poor it is, and it becomes more impoverished each time death carries away the elders of the house. My father bequeathed to me a book where he recounted (according to old letters, registered documents, etc.) everything he knew about his family, and I am thus informed about my paternal ancestors back to 1680. But of the maternal line I don’t know anything, not even proper names, before 1830, and my children won’t even know how to reach 1830. In vain have I told them the old things I know: they confuse them or forget them. Preserve thus a little while a repository of anecdotes, soon reduced to insignificance, that’s all that oral tradition, left on its own, can do.134

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The objects of Bédier’s “domestic folklore” are all military and implicitly colonizing, the memories they evoke bellicose. These memories are to the nation what genealogy is to the family—its source of identity. Even in writing, however, memory remains only partial: it only goes so far (1680, 1830), it holds only so many names (more fathers than mothers).135 Bédier seems to imagine, moreover, that the book won’t help his children. He himself can’t recall the name of a Revolutionary ancestor [je ne sais plus bien lequel].136 Even written documents furnish only fragile barriers to progressive amnesia. In the end, Bédier’s colonial “proof ” of epics’ written origin carries as much contradiction as his story of the Mauritian jongleur in the Fabliaux. Both anecdotes reveal a concerted effort to maintain distinctions (oral versus written, French versus foreign) in the face of more nuanced realities. The analogy itself between medieval and colonial experience weakens the historical and cultural differences that Bédier so cherishes. In presenting his father’s book, Bédier minimizes the role of oral transmission in order to emphasize the continuity guaranteed by written communication. While he later states that he “believes” [je crois] that parts of Adolphe’s book are based on “mere oral tradition,”137 in the Légendes épiques he suppresses the role of orality when he describes the book as based on “old letters, registered documents, etc.” Here, “etc.” covers for the damage of forgetfulness by affirming that all possible sources were used. Adolphe’s own narrative contains similar slippages between certainty and supposition. After stating that he has relied on papers, letters, and conversations with his parents, he writes only that he “believes” [je crois] that the oldest known family ancestor was compromised in the Cellamare conspiracy: this key founding event, repeated by Bédier and others with such assurance, turns out to be only conjecture. Adolphe goes on to state that the family’s aristocratic title is recorded “on an old parchment that can be found at one of the notaries of Bourbon,” but then admits that he is uncertain how to spell the noble name since he has never seen it written.138 Not only has Adolphe not seen the parchment, he does not name its actual location. His history thus relies far more on oral memory than on written materials. And since he wrote the book in Paris (far from any Bourbonnais notaries), it documents exilic imagination as much as colonial experience. Adolphe’s book illustrates both the ephemeral nature of generational memory (supporting Bédier’s thesis in the Légendes épiques) and its vivifying effects (contradicting Bédier’s thesis). Adolphe characterizes memory itself as a desirable personal legacy:

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Happy is he who has left such memories: he does not perish so long as those who knew him think of him and love him and establish thereby through death a kind of communication beyond the grave.139 Memory can establish continuity even in the face of death —an occult telepathy. Imagining his own death, Adolphe urges his children to seek “faith in immortality” by returning often to their memories and regrets.140 Bédier’s attitudes toward death and memory resemble Adolphe’s quite closely. He writes to Gaston Paris’s widow that “we live with our dead,” and to the Marquise that “our dead only survive in our memory: but there, at least, they truly live; it’s up to us that they have there a new and beautiful life.”141 Much later, Bédier vaunted the perfection of his own memory: he recalled every detail of his childhood on Bourbon: And, by a strange spell, the painful things of my childhood and youth, even fever, even my crutch, even my old sorrows, seem to me penetrated with the same charm as my memories of happy events: all my joys, all my sufferings, equally purified, I cherish them with the same tenderness, at once distant and durable.142 Although the idealization of memory with age is a commonplace, in Bédier’s case it engages the larger forces of a national history that “forgets” its own foundational traumas, including the colonial violence that brought people like the Bédiers to Bourbon. The mutually reinforcing effects of memory and amnesia described here, moreover, drive the philological reasoning that underlies the Légendes épiques and Bédier’s entire approach to literary transmission. Bédier’s discussion of his father’s book in the Légendes épiques ultimately bears witness to processes of oral and written transmission far more complex than he admits.143 Like the anecdote from aboard the Yarra told in the Fabliaux, Bédier’s colonial tale in the Légendes épiques reveals its own unreliability. The two anecdotes, moreover, contradict each other: while one illustrates how memory survives across centuries, the other suggests that memories die out quickly; whereas the Mauritian fabliau sustains a fantasy of permanent popular memory, the family book purports to show the power of writing. In both cases, however, Bédier presents his colonial sources as proof of the permanence of French culture since the Middle Ages. His apparent blindness to the fact that they also evidence

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impermanence and contingency reveals the powerful work of colonialist ideology. In the face of the disruptions wrought by geography, history, and experience, Bédier constructs a (romantic) vision of continuous national memory from the eleventh century to the present. Bédier’s thesis inaugurated a defining split between scholars who accept epics’ written genesis (“individualists”) and those who argue for more diffuse processes of oral elaboration (“traditionalists” and “neotraditionalists”).144 While many specific details of Bédier’s pilgrimage thesis have appeared overly imaginative to subsequent scholars, the basic idea of decisive clerical intervention in the latter years of the eleventh century has remained an obligatory point of departure for discussions of origins. The broad effects of Bédier’s creole medievalism have thus contributed to shaping scholarly investigation of medieval literature. For Bédier, any modification of his theory meant “giving away” the Roland to the Germans: I will not agree without good reasons that the epics are of Germanic origins, and, knowing nothing to support this hypothesis except reasons of force, I will only surrender our Song of Roland to the Germanics when the Germans will have already surrendered to the Scythes their Nibelungen.145 Bédier refuses to trace the nation beyond its written record—while positing the absolute stability of that record’s meaning once created. The very structure of dichotomy that Bédier posits —French versus German, written versus oral — derives from a conception of medieval literary history wholly dependent on modern national formations. Bédier’s belief in impermeable categories rests partly on the ideology of continuity that underwrote creole desires for imperial privilege. By claiming to preserve French culture overseas, nationalist creoles invoked a “magic” fusion of continuity and rupture, intimacy and distance. A decolonized approach to epics requires not only looking beyond the question of origins but dismantling the work of categorization itself by pursuing, for example, the sophistication of oral literature and the generic “impurity” of the written tradition itself.146 Even when not explicitly engaged with colonialist and nationalist legacies, these kinds of approaches challenge their hold on the past, encouraging us to imagine a medieval world shaped by conceptions other than our own.

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La chanson de Roland

Bédier put the arguments of the Légendes épiques into practice when he produced his edition of the Roland. He also extended to the epic the nationalizing methods used earlier on the Tristan materials (his publisher reissued Tristan et Iseut alongside the first Roland edition in 1922). Indeed, Bédier’s approach to France’s oldest epic combined the methods of all his previous scholarship: he critiques prevailing editorial methods, recuperates the Anglo–Norman dialect of the “best” surviving manuscript, and produces his own modern French version of the poem. The national, in this case, functions in tandem with the colonial because the Roland motivated Bédier’s desires for the Middle Ages even before he left Bourbon. It later became the vehicle for particularly strong declarations of faithful creole identity. Having finished the manuscript of the Légendes épiques, Bédier seemed at a loss for a new topic for his courses. He wrote to the Marquise in September 1911, and again a year later, that he dreaded the beginning of the upcoming school years because he had no idea what to teach: in both cases, he ended up announcing courses on Roland, as he continued to do during and after the war.147 Indeed, students complained that even when the course titles promised other subjects, Bédier invariably returned to Roland.148 Eventually, he published five revised editions, no two alike, along with a volume of commentaries (1927) and several lengthy essays on editorial history (the last installment appeared in the same journal volume as his obituary).149 It is thus no exaggeration to characterize Bédier’s relationship with Roland as permanent and even obsessive—“an old love story.”150 Throughout his life, he worked in one way or another on France’s foundational epic. Returning repeatedly to Roland, he also returns to the past— his own and the nation’s. The poem’s double status as a personal and public archive enables imaginative conflations of temporal and geographical distances that respond to the homesick desires that philology was supposed to cure. Roland serves ultimately as both the source and destiny of Bédier’s creole medievalism. Bédier’s relationship with Roland begins in Saint-Denis. There, in 1878, under the mango tree that shaded the garden of his family home, he read the new book given to him as a school prize.151 In terms of form, Bédier’s 1922 edition returns to this founding colonial scene. Whether Bédier’s prize was Gautier’s hefty luxury edition of 1872, or one of the later editions

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designed for schools (4th and 5th ed. 1875, 6th ed. 1876), his own Roland serves as a literal double: all are based on the Oxford manuscript (Bodleian Library, Digby 23); all present the medieval text and its modern translation on facing pages. Bédier’s editions of 1922 and 1924 reinforce the equivalency of Old and Modern French with a decorative border that links Bédier’s voice with that of the medieval poet: the border’s inner edges are open half circles, such that together the pages form a continuous line.152 Bédier’s actual translation also seems influenced by Gautier’s. Corbellari suggests, for example, that Bédier followed Gautier in not translating the term amirafle/amurafle.153 Most revealingly, Bédier initially perpetuated one of Gautier’s errors —translating “ewe” as “jument” [mare] instead of “cours d’eau” [stream].154 Bédier thus produces an edition that resembles very closely the book he himself first read on Bourbon. Like other cases of colonial memory and philology, Bédier’s relation with Gautier’s editions turns out to be profoundly contradictory. On the one hand, he imitates Gautier and so authorizes his own formative reading experience. On the other, he often ignores Gautier’s early editions when discussing editorial history, referring almost exclusively to editions produced after 1880 — when Gautier had substantially changed his editorial practice. In Gautier’s editions of the 1870s (one of which Bédier read in Saint-Denis), he treated the Oxford manuscript as the primary authority (with subordinate use of other manuscripts). These editions thus follow the same manuscript classification adopted by Bédier.155 As of 1880, however, Gautier gave equal weight to three manuscript families, producing the composite text that shaped students’ experience of Roland for generations.156 When Bédier published on Roland’s manuscript tradition in 1912, he wrote as if Gautier had only ever followed this “critical method”; he repeated this tendentious editorial historiography in his famous final study.157 Only in the much less influential Commentaires (1927) did Bédier engage the full scope of Gautier’s editorial practice (while still using the composite edition as his sole basis for specific comparisons).158 Overall, Bédier’s editorial historiography simplifies Gautier’s practice, occluding public recognition of his own debts to Gautier’s precedents. The classification of Roland manuscripts lies at the center of nationalist conflicts over philology. The composite editions that Bédier so reviled followed German theories: Wendelin Foerster and Edmund Stengel gave the Oxford manuscript a “brother” and granted equal weight to two other families (Gautier cites Foerster as the inspiration for his change of

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method). Bédier’s arguments in favor of the Oxford manuscript’s unique authority and “preeminent dignity” displaced the Germans in favor of a purely French philology inaugurated by Francisque Michel’s “heroic” first transcription in 1837.159 Bédier writes as if Michel represented the only precedent for his work (his preservation of manuscript forms does resemble Bédier’s philosophy).160 By tying his arguments to Michel, Bédier sidelines another German philologist, Theodor Müller: his 1851 edition is actually based on Michel’s, such that his prioritization of the Oxford manuscript merely ratifies Michel’s foundational work.161 By overlooking the formative role of the early Gautier editions, which followed Müller, Bédier purifies his own editorial genealogy, reconnecting with an origin prior to the attentions of German philology. This nationalist argument simultaneously elides and recovers colonial memory: Bédier ignores the Gautier edition he read on Bourbon, while producing a text quite similar to Gautier’s. This double relation translates the recursive contradictions of creole ideology. The dialect of the Oxford manuscript posed another kind of problem: how could a poem in Anglo-Norman represent French national origins? Previous editors had addressed this embarrassment according to their respective theories of origin: Gaston Paris amended the text to reflect the Francien dialect, while Gautier sought to restore the “purity” of the Norman dialect (liberating it from the “vices” and “dishonor” of Anglo–Norman “dust”).162 Bédier rejected these kinds of interventions while remaining as committed as Gautier and Paris to French origins. He “purifies” the poem’s form in several ways. First, the original French author guarantees basic unity.163 The poem’s universality and “classical” style (akin to Racine’s), moreover, transcend local particularities: the manuscript’s graphic forms do not in themselves orient the poem toward Britain.164 Bédier concedes that the manuscript offers a “pure” representation of the French spoken in England around 1170. This language, however, shares a number of dialectical features with the continental “French” of 1100, and so does not actually differ very much from the poem’s original language.165 Bédier reasons further that the poet himself could have used inconsistent forms: since we do not know what “rules” he followed, we cannot make the copyist responsible for everything that looks like an “error”; correcting anything could change the poet’s own words.166 In effect, Bédier argues that the manuscript’s Anglo-Norman may as well be French, for all anyone knows about the nature of French in 1100. While scrupulously preserving the “foreign”

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dialect, Bédier renders it utterly meaningless. His edition thereby claims a double continuity — simultaneously faithful to the lost original poem (in French) and the surviving manuscript (in Anglo-Norman). Bédier’s editorial arguments reinforced the national recuperation of Roland begun by Lenient, Paris, and Gautier during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 (see chapter 1). Bédier lends philological support, for example, to Lenient’s declaration that the Roland was first written “in true French.”167 And as I have mentioned previously, Bédier radicalized his predecessors’ anti-Germanism in reaction to new political pressures. As he began working on his edition in 1913, he wrote to the Marquise that it was his most urgent project because “it is deplorable that one reads [the poem] today in German editions, detestable besides.”168 His Roland could replace these “deplorable” editions (Müller, Stengel) as well as any number of French editions based on Stengel’s “corrupt” critical method. The Roland had of course been embroiled in national rivalries since its first publication in 1837.169 Bédier, for his part, expressed philological chauvinism from his earliest publications: in his 1894 discussion of the work of the Société des Anciens Textes Français, he declared it “humiliating” and “deplorable” that Germans were recovering French literature before the French.170 Bédier’s Roland thus reanimates the longstanding political dynamics of nationalist philology, renewing their visibility in the wake of the treaty (1919) that restored to France the lands it had lost to Germany in 1870.171 The ultimate destiny of Bédier’s edition is not only national but colonial: he sends the “restored” Roland back to Bourbon with a dedication that publicizes his creole identity: “a l’ile bourbon. diis patriis. j.b.” This dedication captures the dualities of creole identity: the book is addressed to (A) Bourbon, in the same terms that would locate it on (A) Bourbon. The dedication thus deftly places “J.B.” both at a distance from the colony and within it, permitting a double gesture that reproduces Bédier’s own migration. In some editions, this colonial commemoration appears before the title, placing “Bourbon” literally prior to “Roland,” the colonial before the medieval.172 The very name Bourbon amplifies these temporal and geographic tensions, for it usurps the island’s republican name, Réunion, in order to recall the deposed monarchy that first claimed the island. Bourbon vivifies a dynastic memory that reaches all the way to the Middle Ages while resisting metropolitan impositions on local culture. As an expression of creole medievalism, the dedication denies the historical

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and geographic discontinuities that would necessitate a “ré-union.” “A l’île Bourbon” thus phrases a desire for unity while also containing personal and political ruptures. The Latin phrase that completes the dedication introduces further multiplicities. Latin itself draws Bourbon into the prestige of ancient imperialism, establishing a cultural continuum from Rome to France to the Indian Ocean. To be “at home” in all of these times and places requires a transcendent sense of imperial nationalism. The actual phrase, “diis patriis” [beloved fatherland], points toward transcendence by naming a geographical site with a genealogical principle. Through lineage, Bourbon and France are both “ancestral lands” [la etite patrie, la grande patrie], Bédier a colonial migrant with two homes. These ambiguities turn the little island far away into an outsized concept always close at hand. This spatial and temporal conflation defines creole identity as a struggle to reconcile the fractures of a divided “home.” The risk of failure remains equally close at hand: for one metropolitan memorialist, Bédier’s “beloved Bourbon” signals his inveterate alienation: “This tropical atavism, the Parisian of recent vintage wanted to remember it in the dedication of one of his works.”173 From this perspective, Bédier shares fully in the migratory disorientations of the Réunionnais factory worker I cited at the beginning of this book. The shifting “time” of national belonging means that migrants never fully reach “France” or the civilized present. “J.B.” makes every effort to counter this threat of “savagery” with reassuring fictions of eternal unity. Bédier’s Roland dedication emerged from a nexus of creole conversations that reveal the intensity of his desire to make creole identity a source of national cohesion, just like the epic itself. Bédier himself explained his choice in eloquent terms to his compatriots at their celebration for his Académie election, citing a more explicit version: “a l’ile bourbon diis patriis. Aux Vertus de chez nous, Protectrices de nos Cases de Bardeaux” [To the Virtues of our homeland, Protectors of our Shingled Houses].174 Case references Bourbon’s “traditional” European architecture, a form both faithful to “old France” and adapted to the tropics. In a nearly contemporary letter thanking supporters on the island, Bédier underscores the word’s status as Creole rather than French: “mon la case,” set off in quotes.175 The case of the longer dedication thus anchors Bédier’s Roland in a creole landscape, where he remains always “at home,” protected by native spirits. He underscores the intimate relation between the epic and creole identity in his further explanation of the dedication:

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I have put in this book and in the studies that accompany it or will accompany it, the best of myself; it seemed to me that I could allow myself to use it to render homage to our island, and that this was the only means I sought to show it something of my gratefulness.176 In a chivalric spirit, Bédier casts himself as supplicant to his homeland, his work on the epic the direct result of his creole formation. In both this speech and the letter, Bédier grounds his medievalism in faithful creole memory. Later references to the dedication place Bédier in contact with the younger generation of creole writers intent on creating their own “colonial literature.” In one account, Bédier decided to dedicate his Roland to Bourbon while talking with the Leblonds: When he published his Song of Roland, he said to the Leblonds: “I wonder how to demonstrate my love and my gratitude to my little country . . . Do you think they will be pleased there, if I write in the dedication something like: To Bourbon Island, my beloved country?”177 This anecdote, recounted by Hippolyte Foucque at the 1964 centenary celebration of Bédier’s birth, places Bédier in close relation with the “blond” architects of a creole theory of Celtic supremacy and chivalric racism (see chapter 3). The Leblonds’ possible role in Bédier’s dedication makes the book’s decorative cover more than ornamental (even if Bédier did not choose the designs) (Figure 34). These characteristically Celtic decorations deploy circular structures of continuity, where beginning and end turn upon each other in perpetual recursion—a self-enclosure that suggests isolation from outside influences. The medallion and the braid on the cover, along with the borders that run across the inside pages, suggest a racialized colonial frame for the epic’s portrayal of Christian Frankish victory. When philology and colonial Celticism combine to send Roland’s sanctified body from Roncevaux to Bourbon, Bédier’s creole medievalism reaches an imperial climax. Bédier’s connection with the Leblonds went back more than two decades by the time he published Roland. He had family connections to both men: the Merlo family of Ary were distant cousins, and Marius’s uncle Lionel Potier was friendly with Bédier during his student days (they graduated the same year from the Lycée de Saint-Denis).178 Bédier was among

Figure 34. Celtic motifs on the cover of La chanson de Roland, ed. Joseph Bédier (Paris: Piazza, 1922).

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the first of Marius’s diaspora acquaintances: when Marius arrived in Paris in 1896, he showed his first manuscript to Bédier, who reportedly encouraged him.179 Decades later, Bédier inscribed a copy of his acceptance speech to the Académie to both Marius and Ary, “très amicalement.”180 Just a few years after Roland appeared, the Leblonds thanked Bédier at length during a celebration for their novel Ulysse, cafre.181 In October 1931, the day after a party marking the closure of the Réunion pavilion at the colonial exposition, Bédier wrote to the Leblonds inviting them to visit him any morning at the Collège de France.182 A few years later, Bédier attended the celebration of Marius’s entry into the Légion d’Honneur.183 The Leblonds repeatedly cast Bédier as one of Réunion’s most important writers, as they sought to define colonial value through literature (see Introduction). Bédier’s dedication of Roland to Bourbon, then, ratifies the place in imperial culture created for him by the Leblonds. Roland’s colonial connections extend to other members of the creole diaspora. Auguste Brunet (Réunion’s deputy beginning in 1924 and closely connected to the Leblonds) reported that Bédier sent a copy of Roland to his lycée, inscribed with a handwritten dedication to “the protective gods of our shingled houses” [les dieux protecteurs de nos cases de bardeaux].184 Echoing the phrase from Bédier’s speech to his compatriots on the occasion of his Académie election, this dedication once again evokes Creole and the tropical landscape, with the added implication of syncretic religious culture (“gods” in the plural). This possible recognition of Réunion’s multiculturalism offers a glimpse of the epic’s own potential for pluralistic readings (Bédier’s nationalist claims notwithstanding). This copy of Bédier’s edition would have arrived at the lycée around the same time as his photo signed in Latin and Creole and the letter in which he claimed to speak Creole better than French (see chapters 3 and 6). All these documents testify to durable colonial memory, and to multiplicities that contradict the homogenizing interpretations that Bédier imposes on the epic itself. This tension between national cohesion and colonial pluralism traverses all of Bédier’s medievalism, revealing once again the contradictory values that inhabit “creole.” Some years after Bédier’s comments about his creole case, another Réunionnais partisan of empire, Jean D’Esme, remembered his own case in nearly identical terms.185 Even more important, D’Esme provided Foucque with the anecdote of Bédier’s childhood reading of Roland on Bourbon:

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Jean D’Esme in fact once told me of the confidence that the professor at the Collège de France made to him one day: at a distribution of prizes at the lycée of Saint-Denis, he had received an edition of the Song of Roland (undoubtedly Gautier’s, which had appeared a few years earlier). That same evening he plunged into the reading of the beautiful poem and his admiring surprise was such that he would readily locate in that evening the awakening of his vocation for the Middle Ages.186 Foucque’s report implies that inherited creole chivalry needed only the catalyst of contact with the historical Middle Ages to develop into a nationally persuasive medievalism. D’Esme himself cultivated an image of chivalric imperialism. He was a prolific journalist, more widely read in the 1920s and 1930s than the Leblonds or the canonical poets; Brunet named him (along with Bédier) one of the most important representatives of creole culture. Along with numerous travel narratives and procolonial journal articles, D’Esme published Les chevaliers sans éperons [Knights without spurs] (1940), perpetuating the idea of chivalric colonialism with visions of heroic deeds in Mauritanie. His earlier successful novel, Les Dieux Rouges [The red godes], appeared serially in Bédier’s Revue de France (1921–22); Bédier also solicited him to write journalistic reports on the colonies. The two met soon after Bédier’s Académie election and around the time that he founded the review— that is, just as Bédier was completing his Roland. In a 1920 letter to Mareschal de Bièvre, Bédier says that he knows well the growing reputation of “Jean d’Esménard”: having been his father’s classmate and friend, he would be delighted to meet the son (D’Esme was married to Mareschal de Bièvre’s daughter Marie-Andrée).187 Bédier’s contacts with D’Esme attach Roland directly to the creole diaspora. They also suggest, alongside the Leblond conversations, that Bédier readily accepted his compatriots’ desires that he serve as an icon of creole prestige. One last encounter solidifies Roland’s insertion in a network of creole memory — one that extends from Réunion to politically charged Alsace. In the months surrounding the completion of the edition, Bédier delivered a series of lectures (based on the Légendes épiques) to the newly repatriated students and faculty of the University of Strasbourg. At the time, Bédier’s student Gustave Cohen was among the newly appointed French professors. When Cohen later published his account of Bédier’s comments on the meaning of being a blond, blue-eyed creole, he noted in passing that

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Bédier initiated the reflection on creole identity “in regards to Maugain.”188 Gabriel Maugain, like Cohen, arrived at the University of Strasbourg in 1919; he became one of the founders of Italian studies and an important figure in the university through the 1940s.189 Most significantly for Bédier, Maugain shared a colonial heritage: prior to Bédier’s arrival in Strasbourg, Maugain invited him to tea as both a fellow Romanist and a fellow creole: “if I did not have the good fortune to be born on Réunion, at least I have Guadeloupe as my ‘little homeland.’ ”190 The meeting with Maugain apparently sparked Bédier’s desire to make visible the meaning of his blond hair as the sign of a racial identity tempered by imperial histories that stretched from the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean. Bédier’s embrace of creole identity in Strasbourg, on decolonized soil redolent with memories of German occupation, recalls the political affinities between Réunionnais creoles and displaced Alsatians. The Leblonds had continued the connection forged by De Mahy in 1871, publishing essays in praise of Alsace-Lorraine before, during, and after the war.191 Bédier himself imbued his journey to Strasbourg with lyrically patriotic reflections inspired by the Alsatian landscape.192 On the pages of a calendar from 1918, Bédier writes of the faithfulness of the Alsatian people and of the emotional impact of Alsace’s return “for a Frenchman of my age.” Bédier casts the national reunion in the family metaphor so common in national discourse since 1870, writing of brothers and sisters “rediscovered” and of the “renewal” of France itself. This renewal harks all the way back to the nation’s origins as Bédier connects French patriotism in Alsace to Roland (in the process of being printed at that very moment): “love of France having become cult of the ancestors. terre majur.”193 Terre majur is Roland’s term for Charlemagne’s lands, a term whose meaning Bédier gives insistently as “land of the ancestors” (see chapter 5). Bédier thus grants Alsatian patriotism ancient medieval origins, securing the province’s rightful place in the French nation. In Alsace, moreover, terre majur also evokes Barrès’s “La Terre et les Morts” and Fustel de Coulanges’s “terre des ancêtres” (see chapters 3 and 5). Ancestor worship thus grounds national belonging in both Roland and modern Alsace. Bédier elaborates on the transcendent nationalism of regional identities in further notes from his 1920 trip: France, one and indivisible — what does that mean? It means Alsace for the Alsatians, like Brittany for the Bretons, like Béarn

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for the Béarnais, like Dauphiné for Dauphinois; at the same time all of France for the Dauphinois and Béarnais, all of France for the Normans, Flemings, all of France for the Alsatians, all of France for all children, so that they are all enriched by its diversity and by its love.194 These reflections reveal the creole’s deep sense of both regional and national integrity, and the primacy of emotional belonging over geographic limits (even though Bédier does not name any petites patries from overseas). The heartland of republican nationalism can be found anywhere. In Alsace, moreover, the survival of French patriotism proves that colonial occupation cannot deform French culture. And just as Alsatians preserve ideals born of the Middle Ages, Bédier’s “creole brother” Maugain serves as a living reminder of the great distances encompassed by the current “terre majur.” National, colonial, and historical unity coincide at tea in Maugain’s Alsatian home. And Bédier’s own Roland secures their ancient and enduring bonds. Just a month after returning from Alsace, Bédier learned of his election to the Académie Française ( June 1920). Among numerous congratulations, he received a letter from a gentleman who had attended his lectures in Strasbourg: he and his wife appreciated Bédier’s election all the more because he had enabled them to connect the epic to the “new nationalism.”195 They understood, in other words, that Roland and other epic poems could support modern patriotism and Alsace’s reintegration. Roland’s deep entanglements with Bédier’s colonial memories and creole compatriots lend the “new nationalism” an imperial dimension. Bédier in fact intensified his claims on creole identity as he ascended to the pinnacle of national culture at the Académie: between his May 1920 trip to Strasbourg and the 1922 publication of Roland, he repeatedly defined the meaning of creole—to Cohen (May 1920), to Mareschal de Bièvre (October 1920), to Maurice des Rieux (October 1920), to the Académie (November 1921), to the Réunionnais of Paris (February 1922), to the Réunionnais of Saint-Denis (photo and edition, 1921–22). During this entire period, the Roland dedicated to Bourbon worked its way toward the public. Inspired by colonial memory, it emerged amid a network of creole associations activated by Bédier as he defined his public persona as a new Academician.

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Bédier’s creole memories integrate Bourbon into a nationalist vision directly supported by Roland. His literary and philological arguments purified French culture, projecting the nation’s continuous prestige all the way back to the eleventh century and across the globe to Bourbon. The result is a double cultural translation that turns the epic into a representation of the “other” congenial to Bédier’s own notion of “greater France”—a unified entity that originated in the eleventh century and endured in the twentieth, undisturbed by geographic, ethnic, or temporal ruptures. From the perspective of Bourbon, Bédier’s famous summary of the Légendes épiques takes on new resonance: “In the beginning was the road [route].”196 For Bédier, migration generated France’s first “rooted” text. His own journey to epic origins began en route from Paris to Bourbon — and also from Bourbon to Paris. The beginning, then, is a state of colonial suspension between two homes, the route a destiny and a history. This journey with two beginnings shapes Roland— which itself makes a double journey to and from the colony. Bédier’s nearly continuous work on this text is part of a lifelong effort to resolve the tensions of a colonial identity split between two homelands. Bédier’s Roland oriented scholarly and popular understanding of the epic for much of the twentieth century. The edition remained widely available into the 1980s, serving as a durable reference despite the many other editions produced since 1922.197 Indeed, as with Tristan et Iseut, I read it myself as a student; its dedication to the enigmatic “Bourbon” (when I finally noticed it) launched this book — inspiring new contacts between the legacies of medievalism and colonialism. Even when students and scholars have used other editions, they have felt Bédier’s pervasive influence: most editors have focused exclusively on the Oxford manuscript, with ever greater respect for its exact forms. Arguably, even Cesare Segre’s influential revival of the stemmatic approach to the manuscript corpus (1971, 1989) remains fundamentally Bédierist: Segre relies on the Müller stemma that Bédier defended, changing the Oxford text much less than the stemmatic method authorizes; in his second edition he relegates interpolated passages to the notes.198 The prevalence of Bédier’s ideas in Roland’s twentieth-century editorial history reveals the “sympathetic” chord touched by what Ian Short calls Bédier’s “unarticulated political imperatives.”199 As I have shown, these imperatives were not so unarticulated after all. Bédier’s theories of authorship

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and language support not only the French nation, but the general conceptions of cohesion that underlie most forms of national belonging. In Bédier’s case, these conceptions owe a great deal to colonial experience. Bédier’s edition speaks to colonial formations in some very specific ways, from his first reading to his self-fashioning as a creole subject in the 1920s to his enduring reputation as a creole medievalist.200 For all of these reasons, creole medievalism has circulated broadly in French medieval studies since 1922. Today, the Oxford Roland seems liberated from the strictures of Bédier’s conclusions. In France, the French translation of Segre’s “critical” edition has become the new authority (required for the agrégation of 2004); students not trained in Old French are likely to read Ian Short’s version in the Lettres gothiques series, which introduces numerous changes to the Oxford text in an effort to account for scribal knowledge of oral composition;201 scholars now have access to the full corpus of French-language Roland manuscripts through the new editions overseen by Joseph Duggan. Duggan’s project shifts editorial focus from questions of origins and authorship to the dynamics of reception and rewriting. The new editions encourage attention to the Oxford manuscript’s twelfth-century context, to the significance of manuscript artifacts themselves, and to later medieval thinking on the renewable significance of Roland’s story.202 They thus help move French medieval studies beyond the imperial pressures that have shaped so much Roland scholarship. They can also facilitate a decolonization of the epic, since their very plurality challenges Bédier’s privileging of the Oxford manuscript, as well as his theories of aristocratic authorship and linguistic purity (themselves informed by colonial racialism and classism). Formal changes, of course, do not in themselves sever scholarship or teaching from nationalist habits—nor has Bédier’s text precluded resistant readings, as the rich and varied body of twentieth-century scholarship attests. As I argue in the next chapter, Roland can speak to imperial ideologies, while also revealing fissures within ideology itself. Bourbon grounds Bédier’s valuation of pure forms, despite the contradictions that traverse many of his colonial memories. While he defined France as an ancient repository of superior aesthetic genius, creole propagandists defined Bourbon as the faithful guardian of France’s ancient traditions. Bédier’s notion of literary history thus appeals to creole longings for national integration by incorporating historical and geographic ruptures into a seamless imperial whole. Through Bédier’s vibrant sympathy with

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the Middle Ages, distant origins cede ground to perennial continuities: as he declares in one of his late publications: “I have no sense of discontinuity.”203 A creole migrant of multiple origins, Bédier developed literary histories that excluded the recovery of lost origins: he defended multiple origins for the fabliaux, individual creativity as the beginning of both romance and epic, and “best manuscript” editions that eschewed reconstruction. Thus he endeavored to resolve his own fractured relationship with “greater France” into a permanent belonging, undisturbed by colonial migrations and the sense of “foreignness at home.” In this process, the periphery becomes the center’s echo, even its foundation. The persistence of Bédier’s recuperative effort, however, suggests that integration remains incomplete, the dislocations wrought by migration unresolved. Despite Bédier’s declared desire to forget Bourbon, creole memories consistently haunt his philology as he lives the homesickness of exile. These memories shaped his Middle Ages, leaving deep imprints on French literary history.

· CHAPTER 5 ·

A Creole Epic

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he Oxford Roland had monumental importance for French literary politics during the Third Republic. For decades and in numerous editions, it provided genial images of national heroism and imperial ambition. For Bédier, these images were also creole: in Saint-Denis, Roland portrayed the chivalric ideals and racial differences that structured colonial culture. In this sense, Roland is a “creole epic” as the Leblonds defined the term: it supports imperial visions of French superiority. Yet even the Leblonds’ most ideologically charged novels bear witness to more complicated scenarios.1 Likewise, Roland portrays not only the intransigent supremacy of Charlemagne’s Christian empire, but also resilient traces of other values. Roland’s nineteenth-century reception, influentially solidified by Bédier, disavowed these traces in favor of reassuring images of ancient and eternal French valor. In this way, medieval literary history comforted modern colonialism. In the twenty-first century, Roland can still support these kinds of interpretations, which remain as politically potent as ever. But Roland can also do other things: philology, so useful to nationalist imperialism, can also open the epic to alternate histories. Approaches to Roland that resist hegemonic ideology engage creole in the sense most widely recognized today — as a term for autonomous formations shaped by hybridity, métissage, syncretism, and unpredictable diversities. And so, in this chapter, I shift the emphasis of creole from Bédier’s (“privileged white native of Bourbon”) to one that actively encompasses cultural transformations — differences that meet, binaries that fuse, singularities that refract. Even though characterizing Roland as creole in this sense flirts with anachronism, it accurately captures the blendings of memory and forgetting that saturate both ancient and contemporary cultures. Rather than flattening vital historical particularities, the “creole epic” helps to pinpoint the transhistorical pressures of imperial domination as well as the paths to resistance that can open at any time.

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This kind of creole epic arises explicitly in Édouard Glissant’s influential writings on “creolization.” In Poétique de la relation and elsewhere (with frequent direct reference to Roland), Glissant posits that even foundational texts like epics perform the “poetics of relating” that characterizes creolization.2 These foundational or “national” literary forms, be they ancient or contemporary, never function in isolation from the diversities that would be their undoing.3 Glissant thus yokes together Roland and African oral epics: noting that Roland tells a story of defeat and exile (not triumph), he presents epic literature as prophetic of creolized culture: This epic literature . . . speaks the community, but through the relation of its apparent failure or in any case its obsolescence. . . . The collective books of the sacred or of historicity carry the seed of the exact opposite of their turbulent demands. . . . These books found something completely different than a massive, dogmatic, or totalitarian certitude (but for the religious usage that is made of them): these are books of wandering, beyond the quest for or triumph of rooting that the movement of history requires. . . . The very thing that has the function of consecrating the intransigent community thus already transits, nuancing the communitarian triumph in revealing wanderings.4 While the epic claims to root [enracinement] a stable and transcendent community (“France” in the case of Roland), it also reveals this community’s “relations” with migration [errance]. While seeking to exclude the “other” (and later used to consecrate that exclusion), the epic nonetheless invites relations. Because it promulgates both ardent desires for hegemony and their opposites, the epic sows the seeds of creolization. Roland, I will argue, witnesses traces of prior “relations,” capturing a particular moment in a recursive process of cultural becoming (creolization) whose beginnings and ends always lie beyond the horizon. Glissant’s explicit “relations” with the poetics of medieval culture embed creolization within the very foundations of “national” literature. Throughout his writings, Glissant meditates on the dialectal relations between orality and writing in ways that break down their opposition and illuminate epic composition.5 He links, for example, medieval composition to creolization through plainchant—the liturgical music of the early Christian church. Like the “intransigence” of the epic, the monophony of plainchant already

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“relates” to polyphony and the “transit” of creolization: plainchant is one of the “preferential locations of the poetics of Relation.”6 Medieval French, moreover, illustrates linguistic creolization—and Caribbean Creoles encode its traces.7 All of these formulations “relate” even the most seemingly monolithic representations to diversity and heterogeneity.8 Roland, then, as a respository of national consciousness, can also move beyond nationalist appropriation: it can mobilize other forgotten and disavowed relations: “Any presence—even unknown—of a particular culture, even silent, is an active relay in Relation.”9 Glissant’s conception supports what might be called a “philology of relation”: the tools developed by nationalist philology turn against monolithic memory, giving voice to silence and diffracting origins rather than securing them. In this perspective, creole medievalism means recognizing that the epic participates in relations other than the consecrated national ones. The creole and creolized epic, moreover, relates the intransigent “creole” of Bédier’s worldview to his own errance and the diversity that shaped it. Roland is “creole” in Bédier’s terms (culturally pure and Francocentric) as well as in Glissant’s. This very tension between singularity and refraction is profoundly creole: it points to the constant interplay of rupture and recovery, memory and forgetting. As a creole text, Roland can challenge its own recuperation as a univocal history of France. I begin, then, with Bédier’s influential interpretation of Roland as a national text. Bédier (and many others) accept Roland’s ideology of absolute and immutable differences as the poem’s defining ethos (“Pagans are wrong and Christians are right”).10 Bédier accentuates Roland’s express denial of mutuality and reciprocity through his translation, enhancing differences and reducing ambiguities. In the second, more substantial, section of this chapter, I excavate traces of alternate histories from material objects of ambiguous origin. Through material history, Roland records the traces of past cultural relations while setting new ones in motion. The poem does represent the kind of collective forgetting on which nations and empires thrive, but this is not its only social model nor even the one that triumphs. Colonizing the Epic

Bédier’s engagements with Roland constitute an extended effort to address the social and psychological ruptures of a creole migration. All of this work — editing, criticism, translation — grapples with conflicts between

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continuity and rupture, individuality and collectivity, home and elsewhere. In editing, Bédier negotiated these conflicts by focusing on the oldest manuscript to the exclusion of all others and by respecting the manuscript’s Anglo–Norman forms; this philological labor revisits the form of the poem Bédier first read in Saint-Denis while also discarding that precedent (see chapter 4). In his literary criticism, Bédier resolves conflicts by insisting on the poem’s complete devotion to France. Finally, through translation, Bédier acts as both reader and writer of the poem’s imperial message. By rewriting Roland, Bédier brings French colonialism to bear on the medieval epic. In the process, he bolsters the purity of Roland’s French identity by resisting some of its portrayals of cross-cultural interaction. Most of Bédier’s literary criticism serves primarily to support his philological arguments. He generally follows the established tradition that “nationalized” Roland’s cultural diversity (multiethnic army, imperial home in Aachen) by focusing on Roland himself. This process began with the conventional title (not attested in the Oxford manuscript). Gautier confirmed the national import of Roland’s character when he stated succinctly: “Roland is France made man.”11 Bédier’s version of this argument highlights the debate between Roland and his companion Olivier over calling for Charles’s help against the Saracen army. Many critics have tried to explain the apparent opposition between Roland’s “prowess” (he refuses to call for help) and Olivier’s “wisdom” (he counsels requesting reinforcements).12 Bédier considered this conflict central to the poem’s meaning and clearly took Roland’s side, firmly separating the superlative Roland from all others. Bédier’s comments on language further nationalize the poem by treating the medieval text as virtually synonymous with modern French—the language of a fully developed imperial nation. In characterizing his translation, Bédier emphasizes continuity over change: his modern text is a “transcription” into “today’s language [langage], a ‘translation.’ ”13 Placing translation under erasure in scare quotes, Bédier casts modern French as identical to Anglo-Norman, itself faithfully “transcribed” from the manuscript. In this sequence of equivalences, Bédier facilitates connection with the past by avoiding “recent words,” selecting instead only those with “very old titles.”14 Here, continuity functions as an aristocratic quality. Bédier claims a particular affinity for the author’s “aristocratic bearing”—“the proud carriage, very refined, of an ingenious, nuanced, determined language, and which reveals a constant care to distinguish common usage

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[usage vulgaire] from proper usage [bon usage].15 Bédier admires, in other words, the absence of stylistic or social “mixing.” His translation aims specifically to safeguard this pure aristocratic style —the “sovereign quality of the old master.”16 This goal is difficult to achieve, according to Bédier, because so many words are no longer in use, “or, which is worse, survive, but diverted from their original meaning, weakened or demeaned!” Change, then, is worse than death, while true nobility survives untainted across the centuries. Bédier thus designs his translation, like Roland as he understood it, to resist the ravages of time.17 His modern text enacts continuity just like the edition (with its careful reproduction of manuscript forms) and the dedication (with its devotion to the colonial homeland). Bédier thereby endows France’s national epic with a purified linguistic heritage, akin to his own colonial values. Bédier’s “aristocratic” translation protects national purity further by reinforcing differences between the valorous “French” and everyone else. Most broadly, he turns the ethnically ambiguous “Francs” into the clearly national “Français.”18 He also minimizes the application of positive terms to the Saracens while turning neutral terms for them into negative ones.19 Elsewhere, Bédier reinforces distinctions between the opposing sides: Roland’s observation of the great “loss” of his fellows becomes a “massacre”; the “conquering” Roland becomes the “victor”; a general description of battlefield deaths gains oppositional force with the naming the two sides (“French” and “pagans”).20 Bédier reinforces Christian identity when he specifies the Saracen Bramimonde’s knowledge of “holy law.”21 France itself becomes “saintly” (rather than merely “free” or “sovereign”).22 These translations all amplify the poem’s tendency to encourage the reader, as Stephen Nichols puts it, “to take sides with and against the characters and their positions.”23 Blocking readers’ access to certain nuances and ambiguities, they translate historical complexities into ideological simplicities. Bédier’s most powerfully nationalizing translation may be La terre des aïeux (Land of the Ancestors) for terre majur, one of the terms used to designate Charles’s land.24 Bédier explains that the phrase derives either from a Latin adjective (“great land”) or genitive plural (“land of the fathers”): justifying his choice of the latter, he concludes with the utmost mystification: “Forced to choose . . . I put ‘Land of the Ancestors,’ por ço que plus bel seit.”25 Bédier relies here on aesthetics (“because it’s more beautiful”) rather than on any specific philological reasoning, a procedure that reads

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modern French values into the medieval epic.26 “La terre des aïeux” is more beautiful precisely because, like the “diis patriis” of Bédier’s dedication, it conjoins disparate spaces under the unifying concept of “ancestral lands” (even such spaces as Bourbon and France). Bédier expresses his modern judgment in medieval French—adopting it as his native language.27 And yet, this assertion of identification with the medieval text actually reinstates ambiguity: the phrase “por ço que plus bel seit” occurs only once in Roland—describing the Saracens ’ desire to embellish their entry into battle (l. 1004). Bédier thus silently (inadvertently?) adopts the “other’s” perspective as guarantor of “France’s” purity.28 “La terre des aïeux” thereby excludes certain “families” from the nation even as it points toward their centrality. Bédier’s proclamation of national community thus contains its own challenge: the aesthetic preference is both “native” and “foreign,” transcendent and contingent, modern and medieval. Despite these entanglements, Bédier endeavors to conflate “terre majur” (a kind of medieval “greater France”) with France itself. In the Légendes épiques, he embraced Roland’s “sweet France” as “precisely ours” —with a diversity of peoples (Lorrains, Gascons, Normands, Provençals) but also a fundamental unity: “the poet witnesses for us the simplicity with which French unity was made.”29 Later, Bédier makes the identity of “France” with “terre majur” explicit: And what the poet celebrates in the name of “sweet France” or “Terre majur” (l. 600), which is terra majorum, which is “homeland” [patrie] is not the vague empire of the Carolingians, or the narrow domain of the Capetians, it’s not a delimited territory, it’s a spiritual being [personne morale].30 This French legal term personifies “France” without reference to geography or genealogy; it echoes Renan’s “conscience morale.”31 Bédier uses the same term in a later article identifying the eleventh century as the moment when France gained consciousness “of its spiritual unity, felt itself a conceptual being.”32 Emphasizing the nation’s notional autonomy, these definitions make “Frenchness” an identity available to all who answer to the nation’s laws (medieval or modern, creole or metropolitan). In this vision, there is no east or west, south or north, only a transcendent “French” that knows no bounds. This abstract collectivity recuperates geographic and historical

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differences into the timelessness of national belonging. The fact that Bédier’s interpretation of “terre majur” has frequently been repeated, and without comment, keeps this tendentious national narrative circulating.33 Bédier’s insistence on ancestors—on a racial basis for landed identity— converges on the well-established national debate over Franco–German identities, which intensified in the aftermath of 1870 and remained alive after 1918. Most interestingly, Bédier’s comments on “terre majur” echo both Fustel de Coulanges and Barrès writing about Alsace and Lorraine. Fustel, critiquing German historians’ patriotic approach to history in 1872, grudgingly admired their commitment to ancestor worship: The Germans all have the cult of the homeland [patrie], and they understand the word homeland in its true sense: it’s the Fatherland [Vaterland], the land of the father [terra patrum], the land of the ancestors [terre des ancêtres], it’s the country [pays] as the ancestors had it and made it. They love this past, above all they respect it. They only speak of it as one speaks of a holy thing [chose sainte].34 Fustel’s “terra patrum” corresponds to Bédier’s interpretation of “terre majur,” his “terre des ancêtres” to a less formal version of “terre des aïeux,” his “chose sainte” to the sanctified patriotism of “France la sainte.” All of these terms echo Bédier’s dedication, “diis patriis.” Bédier thus performs through translation the national historiography of ancestor worship that Fustel imagined. In Bédier’s era, Fustel’s “terre des ancêtres” became a powerful concept for reactionary patriotism, codified by Barrès as “la terre et la mort.”35 Not surprisingly, members of the Action Française claimed Fustel’s legacy as vigorously as they did Bédier’s.36 For Barrès, as for Bédier, secure rootedness in a distinct local culture supported the greater project of the nation. According to Barrès, the loss of identification with this native land—the story of ill-fated “déracinés” [uprooted ones] — marked the beginning of national decay. For Bédier, medievalism provided a direct path “back to the roots,” a cure for individual and national indirection. He lived with an impressive expression of this deep genealogy in his own adopted homeland, the Dauphiné: on the outskirts of the village of Le Grand-Serre, where Bédier frequently vacationed at his wife’s family home, stands an old stone cross engraved: “notre tere / qui etes aux aieux / que votre nom / soit sanctifie” [our land who belongs to the ancestors, may

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your name be sanctified]. Here, “France la sainte” and “la terre des aïeux” coincide to place the “petite patrie” on the path to national trascendence. Bédier’s patriotic musings on “terre majur” exclude a third etymological possibility, first proposed by Bédier’s student Prosper Boissonade— that it translates an Arabic term for the European continent, al-’ard· alkabîra. This etymology has gained a certain acceptance, with a detailed argument in support by Roger M. Walker.37 Walker demonstrates that the only characters who use the expression “terre majur” are Ganelon and the Saracens, concluding that all of the “traitors” adopt an oppositional, Arabic usage; he suggests that the one time the narrator uses the term, it probably does mean “Land of the Ancestors.”38 To imagine that both the Latin and Arabic explanations of “terre majur” are correct, as Walker does, is to imagine a text traversed by multiple knowledges, shaped by cultural contacts, resistant to the singular desires of any individual—precisely the kind of text that Bédier found unimaginable. For his part, Bédier maintained that little knowledge of Arabic culture informed Roland. In considering the date of the Oxford poem, he casts doubt on its direct debts to the Crusades. Instead, he emphasizes the formative role of French incursions into Spain —locating the poem’s genesis in efforts to eradicate Islamic dominion in Europe (which opened the pilgrimage route to Compestela that Bédier considered foundational for epic narrative).39 Most specifically, Bédier asserts that none of the poem’s Saracen names have Arabic etymologies.40 Etymology remains a controversial subject, but Bédier’s complete dismissal of the topic has as much to do with an ideological resistance to foreign influences (manifest throughout the Fabliaux, Tristan et Iseut, and Légendes épiques) as it does with philological evidence. Bédier did credit Boissonade with developing the best picture of the eleventh-century French wars in northern Spain (crucial to Bédier’s own thesis), and had ample opportunity to at least mention Boissonade’s theory about “terre majur.”41 Boissonade’s effort to tie Roland directly to the Spanish expeditions of Rotrou du Perche certainly has its share of flaws.42 But beyond the theory’s inherent weaknesses, it also “contaminated” the epic lineage that Bédier saw as so purely French. By denying possible Arabic influences, Bédier made “terre majur” a uniquely French source of national geography. Bédier’s resistance to the history of French contacts with Arabs and Islam also speaks to the pressures of the modern empire. Just as the conquest of Algeria in 1830 impinged on the earliest interpretations of Roland,43

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so new conflicts in the 1920s provide a revealing context for Bédier’s edition. Soon after the book went into circulation, the Institut Musulman de la Mosquée de Paris opened in Bédier’s own 5th Arrondissement, down the hill from the Panthéon. The mosque made the importance of French– Muslim relations patently visible in the capital; Roland seemed to underscore their length as well as France’s rights of dominance. The epic and the mosque, however, also witness the participation of Arabs and Islam in the formation of “France.” And both speak to broader colonial interests— Bédier’s book to Bourbon and the mosque to Franco–German rivalries in northern Africa. During the war of 1914–18, Germany sought to establish itself as the defender of global Islam and France as an infidel invader; France sent Muslim soldiers from its colonies to fight Germans on the continent. General Lyautey, who presided at the groundbreaking for the mosque in 1922, brought together these various colonial strands: he had overseen the colonization of Madagascar, been the commander in Morocco during the crises of 1904–5, and helped elect Bédier to the Académie Française in 1920.44 Lyautey’s speech at the groundbreaking proclaimed the successful integration of Islam in France, while masking the government’s actual practice of segregating Arab migrants.45 Roland, by contrast, masks histories of contact while proclaiming cultural segregation between Christians and “pagans.” In both cases, a simplified ideology takes the place of more complex experiences. In both cases, nationalist imperialism overwrites emerging creolizations. Creole Empires

For much of Roland’s modern history, criticism has followed the interpretative lines solidified by Bédier: the “good French Christians” secure their cohesion through the inexorable exclusion of the “bad infidel Saracens”; even similarities between the two groups redound to the greater glory of the “French.”46 More recently, however, new assessments of the very concepts of “difference” and “resemblance” have shifted critics’ understanding. The poem’s binary logic instead seems to conceal the fragility of distinctions between Franks and Saracens, or the threat of divisions within Frankish society itself.47 These kinds of interpretations open Roland toward diversity, syncretism, and métissage. The poem comes to reveal processes of exchange and substitution that undermine its aspirations for permanent differences. As R. Howard Bloch has noted, the epic “represents from its inception the

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disruption of an essentially continuous past.”48 Cast in terms of creolization, Roland illustrates the mutual generation of “rootedness” [racine] and “wandering” [errance]. The creole epic recalls and promises the dissolution of the immutable community that it constructs and mourns. Within the poem, divine intervention secures the integrity of a Frankish imperium.49 By insisting on the holiness of the Franks’ mission, Roland diverts attention from the many exchanges and substitutions that also drive the action. Roland thus projects an ideology of absolute differences (Roland is unique; pagans are “wrong”) against a background of shared histories (Franks wearing Islamic silk; Saracens with blond hair). Stark differences support the dream of group cohesion, while resemblances witness ever changing alliances. The ideology of difference aligns the Franks with a timeless transcendence, while the facts of similarity ground them (and everyone else) in troubled histories and uncertain futures. While transcendence promises a durable empire, contingencies suggests improvisation and unexpected outcomes. This kind of refracted reading challenges the tradition of nationalist interpretation, and complicates Bédier’s own relation to the epic. Challenges to the Frankish Christian vision of autonomous transcendence come from various sources, including their own internecine conflicts, the structures of the feudal economy, and the paradoxes of the Christian empire. The Franks do not in fact function as a self-sufficient community but rather depend on “others” for military labor, religious converts, and material goods. I focus here on the latter, drawing out Roland’s relations with multiplicity and errance through literal and metaphoric exchanges. As objects transit from one place or person to another, they carry historical traces while accumulating new associations; they can also lose connections along the way. They thus provide particularly rich terrain for observing the creolizations that lie within and derive from ideologies of singularity. Objects have attracted much critical attention in the study of Roland, especially prestige objects (like Roland’s sword Durendal) and their symbolically charged movements (like the angel receiving Roland’s glove). These scenes tend to promote the poem’s investments in transcendent differences. By contrast, objects that appear incidental to the main action — silk cloths, fur coats, ivory chairs —open perspectives on contingent relations and unpredictable convergences. While undeniably luxurious, these objects are not unique personal talismans like Durendal. Roland’s other

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personal object — the ivory horn that lies at the center of the drama at Roncevaux — actually connects Frankish univocality to the ambiguities of other ivory objects. Not only does ivory, like silk and fur, appear in the possession of both Franks and Saracens, but all three materials have more than one possible source and thus more than one possible meaning. These materials cover the full extent of European global trade from the eighth to the twelfth century (from the time of Charles to the inscription of the Oxford manuscript). They traverse the many historical moments that have left their traces in the text. When viewed from what seems like the background, Roland reveals its ideological labors. The presence among the Franks of goods also used by the Saracens belies the oppositional logic that motivates Christian aggression. The casual familiarity with which these goods circulate testifies further to Frankish desires at odds with the poem’s more strident moral claims. Instead, these materials imply shared histories of trade, diplomacy, and conquest. These interactions move objects through cultures in multiple directions; the nature of the interactions partially creates the objects’ meaning.50 In Roland, we only occasionally witness the transaction, and never the complete trajectory from manufacture to final use. Interpretation must then account simultaneously for multiple material sources along with the sometimes conflicting implications of gifts, commodities, and contraband. When objects defy precise localization, they purvey ambiguities that unsettle categories of difference. Even as the narrator and various Franks reject the Saracen “other,” Roland opens toward mutuality and reciprocity with the “enemy.”51 As such, Roland portrays “creolization” as foundational to Frankish culture. Woven like silk threads through the fabric of the Frankish empire, ambiguous materials tie together the episodes that shape the Roland’s most pressing ethical and political dilemmas. Roland begins with a striking set of parallels between Charles and his enemy Marsile: both are seated, under trees, surrounded by counselors (ll. 10–13, 103–16). Their difference seems equally obvious: Marsile declares his army powerless while Charles has just captured another city (ll. 18–19, 96–97). The décor of Charles’s camp, however, suggests a third kind of relationship—one of shared material resources. The booty from the captured city, for example, includes “costly equipment” [guarnemenz chers] (l. 100)—Saracen resources to support Charles’s army. Meanwhile, Charles’s troops take comfort and pleasure from other Saracen goods: “On white silks [palies] the knights sit, they play at tables [backgammon] to amuse

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themselves and the wisest and elders at chess” (ll. 110–12). Silk and chess both testify to luxury values shared by both Franks and Saracens. The Franks’ cloths could have come from anywhere in the vast trade network that stretched across the Mediterranean basin and beyond.52 They represent direct or mediated interactions with Islamic artisans, or with the Christian East; the Franks could have brought their palies with them (perhaps from their conquest of Constantinople, l. 2329) or acquired them during their seven years in Spain.53 The Franks’ cloths are thus potentially both “native” and “foreign”—close-woven fabrics that unravel the security of their own allegiances. Chess, meanwhile, came to Europe from “Saracen” lands, becoming widely known in the course of the eleventh century; legend held that Charlemagne received chess pieces from the Caliph Haroun al-Rashîd.54 Chess thus manifests Frankish appreciation for the refinement of Arabic culture. From first sight, then, Roland associates Charles with the transfer of objects and knowledge toward northern Europe, and with deeply ambiguous material histories. When Ganelon arrives in Saragossa as Charles’s messenger, he encounters another scene both familiar and foreign: under a pine tree, Marsile sits on a “faldestoed” (l. 407), just like Charles (l. 114–15) — that is, on a “folding seat.”55 While Charles’s seat is made of gold (l. 115), Marsile’s is covered in Alexandrian silk (l. 407). This fabric links Marsile not only to his enemy Charles (whose men lounge on white silk) and to his lord Baligant (who later embarks from Alexandria, l. 2626–27), but directly to Ganelon, who arrives wearing a coat “covered in an Alexandrian silk” (l. 463). Juxtaposed with Marsile’s silk, Ganelon’s marks his pending complicity with the Frank’s enemy (he seems to receive new silks after agreeing to help Marsile, ll. 845–47). Yet similar silks later envelope the martyred hearts of Roland and Olivier (“un palie galazin,” l. 2973).56 With the same material covering Ganelon’s traitorous shoulders, Marsile’s pagan seat, and Roland’s sacred heart, the poem’s edifice of secure differences crumbles. The silks defy ethical interpretation. Underneath the silk, Ganelon’s coat is made of sable fur (l. 462)—another ambiguous material. One of the most luxurious furs, sable came almost exclusively from Russia and Scandinavia. Like silk, it circulated broadly among different ethnic and religious groups, as Roland attests: Marsile soon offers Ganelon new sable pelts if he will stay to talk (l. 515). The fact that both men possess the same kind of fur testifies to their shared commerce in fine ornament, a point of contact (like Alexandrian silk) that

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contravenes their differences and conveys their readiness to reach agreement. Sable in fact materialized deep European entanglements with “Saracens,” since the northern taste for luxury furs developed partly from Arabic influences dating from the ninth century and peaking in the eleventh.57 Charlemagne’s contemporary, the Caliph Haroun al-Rashîd, reportedly had four thousand fur-lined robes in his treasury when he died in 809.58 Later, Saragossa (and al-Andalus in general) exported sable fur garments to eastern Islamic regions (newly dubbed knights in the romance Galeran de Bretagne wear coats trimmed with fur, cut from silk from “the land of the Moors”; Arab chroniclers describe similar garments).59 Sable, like silk, thus witnesses relations between Franks and Saracens that precede Charles’s war in Spain. Perhaps they have traded with each other or with the same merchants in contact with craftsmen from Moscow to Alexandria; perhaps Ganelon acquired his fur coat before coming to Spain or adopted “the fashion of the Moors” more recently. In any event, this coat stitches together southern and northern cultural connotations, setting the scene for shifting alliances. The scene of Marsile and Ganelon’s pact against Roland introduces a third ambiguous material—ivory: Marsile’s oath takes place with a “faldestoed made of an olifant ” (l. 609). Olifant can refer to ivory used for any purpose and of any dentine source —elephant (and therefore from Africa or India), buffalo, walrus, etc. Ivory carving, moreover, was practiced both in Spain under the Umayyad dynasty (eighth to eleventh centuries) and at the Carolingian court.60 Ivory seats like Marsile’s are attested in both northern Europe and the far East.61 Marsile’s faldestoed, then, evokes a “foreign” art consistent with his “Saracen” status as well as “domestic” art perfectly familiar to the Franks. The ivory seat, like Ganelon’s silk-covered furs, could originate in the north, south, or east; it defies any single cultural signification. Even within the poem’s dominant Christian ideology, ivory remains ambiguous: it connotes both purity and falsity.62 Finally, the paratactic structure of the laisse [stanza] leaves unclear whether the seat supports Marsile, Ganelon, or the book on which Marsile swears his oath. In any of these roles, ivory supports treachery. The scene’s indeterminacy, however, underscores ivory’s own multiplicity. The conclusion of the pact illustrates how “foreign” objects enter Frankish culture through diplomacy: Ganelon accepts a sword, a helm, and two necklaces (for his wife) (ll. 620, 629, 637). Armor, jewels, silk, sable, and

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ivory thus decorate the scene from beginning to end. Whatever the origins of these objects, their seemingly universal desirability challenges the value structure that opposes Franks and Saracens, Christians and pagans, foreign and domestic. External markers of identity prove thoroughly unreliable if everyone wears the same thing. All of these objects point to cross-cultural traffic in precious goods—precisely the kind of traffic denied by the poem’s surface ideology of irreconcilable differences. From this perspective, Ganelon and Marsile do not have to travel very far to recognize each other—and not only because the poem defines Ganelon from the beginning as a “traitor” and Marsile as the “enemy.” In the scenes of battle preparation that follow the pact against Roland, the ambiguities surrounding material culture seep into the direct confrontation of Franks and Saracens. Just before the battle begins, the narrator admires the brilliant colors and shimmering reflections of the Saracens’ equipment, noting in conclusion that “They blow a thousand trumpets [grailles] so that it will be more beautiful [por ço que plus bel seit]: great is the noise, and so the French heard it” (ll. 1004–5). Mingling past and present tense, this passage performs the inextricability of Saracen and Frankish perspectives: everyone hears the sound [noise] and appreciates its aesthetic beauty63 (including Bédier, who adopts the phrase as his own). The trumpets’ call, by its nature, defines a community that exceeds ethnicity, religion, or political allegiance: it reaches all who hear, shading gradually into silence with no definite boundary; it can signify differently to each listener. The term noise itself includes the connotation of “dispute,” and so the trumpets’ harmonies also include dissonance. Noise thus participates in the ambiguities that attach to material artifacts like silk, fur, and ivory. These ambiguities merge dramatically in Roland’s own trumpet —the olifant that will answer the Saracen grailles while echoing the material of Marsile’s faldestoed. Immediately following the eruption of the Saracens’ noise, Roland tries to establish clarity: It is good that we are here for our king. For one’s lord a man must suffer distress and endure both great heat and great cold, a man must lose both hide and hair. Now take care that each one [of you] gives great blows, so that no bad song be sung about us! Pagans are wrong and Christians are right. A bad example will never be made of me. (ll. 1009–16)

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Roland makes defense of one’s lord and of Christian rectitude the basis of Frankish identity.64 Failure to fulfill these obligations would set a bad example, which future generations would learn through commemorative songs (Roland clearly believes in the power of oral transmission). As Roland states again once he recognizes Ganelon’s treason: “A bad song should not be sung about this” (l. 1466). By casting himself as an object of potential admiration,65 Roland turns his actions into a message to posterity: his story, and his ideology, should shape the imperial community. This laisse, which begins with the image and sounds of the Saracens approaching battle, concludes with Roland’s hope for a lasting song of righteous deeds. By even considering the possibility of a “bad song,” however, Roland reveals the fragility of the Frankish community. Roland and Olivier proceed to enact this fragility with their argument over whether to call for reinforcements from Charles. Both seek to protect the integrity of the Frankish empire, but their disagreement over the method suggests that they have already failed. Olivier focuses on the primacy of Charles (the only phrase repeated in each laisse is “Charles will hear it” [ll. 1060, 1052, 1071]). Roland, however, insists that only silence will honor the Franks: “May it not please God . . . that it be said by any living man that for pagans I was ever blowing [my horn]!” (ll. 1073–75). This sentiment echoes his previous desire to avoid bad songs as well as his demand that Olivier be silent about Ganelon (ll. 1026–27). Roland’s own silence also concerns Ganelon. Not only does he avoid calling back the lord to whom he previously declared his self-sufficiency,66 he protects the honor of his family and the nation (mi parent [l. 1076], France [l. 1090]). Calling for Charles will reveal to both that they harbor a traitor. For Roland, family, France, and emperor are all one.67 Ironically, the poem later tells exactly what Roland hoped would never be told, thereby including Ganelon’s noise as an integral part of Roland’s song [cançun]. In this way, Roland tells several conflicting stories, impeding Roland’s stated desire to honor France. In the course of this argument, Olivier names Roland’s horn for the first time in the poem.68 In opposing Roland, he thus seems to join the traitors: olifant recalls Marsile’s faldestoed as easily as it does Charles’s army. Roland’s oliphant, long considered essential to understanding the poem as a whole,69 signifies within this larger network of ambiguous artifacts that perturb monolithic ideologies. It embodies the same traces of shared material culture as silks and furs, a sharing that belies the Saracens’ utter

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“wrongness.” In addition to the connotations already evoked by Marsile’s seat (tusk of any animal from the north, south, or east; luxury; purity; falsity), the ivory horn suggests specific cross-cultural traffic. Surviving oliphants date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries —the same period in which Roland was probably composed. More than one such horn was subsequently labeled “Roland’s” (see chapter 2); legend holds that Charlemagne received an oliphant from the Caliph Haroun al-Rashîd.70 Surviving oliphants often depict hunting scenes and Islamic-style décor, produced by a craft industry that stretched across the Mediterranean and included Muslim artists; the name itself may have an Arabic etymology.71 This geographic breadth impedes any effort to make material “origins” correspond to cultural “differences.”72 Style also witnesses the malleability of “difference”: the “Cluny horn,” for example, includes both fine Fatimid style carvings and rougher Christian-themed images in a Byzantine style.73 Bearing traces of these “foreign” origins, oliphants performed a number of functions integral to Christian feudalism — warfare, hunting, conveyance of land tenure, storing relics, and replacing church bells at the end of Holy Week.74 Nearly all of these functions appear in Roland.75 As a geographically and materially indeterminate object,76 the horn defies the poem’s oppositional geography (east versus west, north versus south). If elephantine, it further documents Frankish participation in a luxury trade based on multicultural syncretism. Roland and Olivier’s second argument over the horn deepens the fissures opened by the first. Not only do they disagree on how best to serve the Frankish community, they now reverse their previous arguments (laisses 117, 127–32). Roland even begins by repeating exactly Olivier’s earlier conclusion: “Charles will hear it, who is moving through the passes” (ll. 1071, 1703). Ironically, Roland defends absolute differences by changing his position—undermining his own ideology. He ultimately defines the empire’s value through his own singular achievements (evident in his later forceful repetition of the first-person pronoun jo, ll. 2339–54). Olivier, by contrast, values social continuity irrespective of particular individuals. He reveals this principle when he threatens to deprive Roland of his fiancée Aude (ll. 1719–21): treating his sister as an object of exchange, Olivier imagines disrupted genealogy as a persuasive fear.77 Roland repeatedly stages this conflict between exchange (Olivier’s dominant view) and singularity (Roland’s dominant view), all the way to the last line. This conflict concerns the nature of the Frankish community: is “dulce France” reaching its end,

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or only beginning to emerge? Roland and Olivier argue in effect over community formation itself—that is, the relative value of individuals versus groups, rupture versus continuity, racine versus errance. As such, Roland speaks to the nature of national belonging across the ages. Roland’s ivory horn and Marsile’s ivory seat are both deeply implicated in Ganelon’s maneuvers against the rearguard: the chair marks the site of the pact; when Olivier understands that they have been entrapped, he calls for Roland to sound the horn; when the horn does sound, Charles finds Ganelon immediately guilty. In each case, ivory channels the message of false dealings. In the end, though, the oliphant moves toward sacralized transcendence. Roland’s horn blast suggests the trumpets of the Last Judgment, as do the earthquakes and thunder that accompany the first indication of Roland’s pending death.78 By sounding the horn, Roland combines a signal to Charles with submission to the divine. This submission is simultaneously an entry into history: if Roland’s “bloody stigmata” (the ruptured temple and bleeding mouth that result from his effort) indicate a movement toward sacralization, they also mark the beginning of his end — the wounds from which he will eventually die.79 Transcendence and historical contingency thus combine in the process of Roland’s death, encapsulating tensions that traverse the entire poem. The scene of Roland’s death merges the hero and the horn, encasing historical limits within redemptive transcendence (and vice versa). As Roland composes his body for death, it becomes the oliphant’s reliquary. After Turpin takes the oliphant to bring back water for the mortally wounded Roland (l. 2225), Roland finds him dead and takes care to recover the horn: “He took the oliphant, so there would be no reproach about it, and Durendal his sword in the other hand” (ll. 2263–64). Critics have occasionally puzzled over what sort of “reproach” Roland seeks to avoid. Like Durendal, the oliphant symbolizes Roland’s obligations to Charles:80 the oliphant’s loss (or worse, passage into Saracen hands) would signify a dereliction tantamount to treason. Roland thus seeks to maintain his impeccable service record. The parallel between the oliphant and Durendal (symbol of the sanctified imperial mission) solidifies when Roland feels his sword being taken: “[The Saracen] seized Roland’s body and his weapons, and said one thing: ‘Charles’s nephew is vanquished! I will carry this sword to Arabia’ ” (ll. 2280–82). Until now, the poem has portrayed various objects traveling into Frankish society: here, Roland resists the counterflow of Christian Frankish objects toward Arabia by defending

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the sword with the oliphant (l. 2287). He kills the Saracen, but damages his beloved horn: “The mouth of my oliphant is split [fenduz], the crystal and gold have fallen off ” (ll. 2295–96). The oliphant is now infirmed like Roland (“each has been ruptured by the other”); having “spoken” for Roland against the Saracen’s boast, the horn itself is now “speechless” (fendre; nearly always fatal).81 The broken oliphant commemorates Roland’s effort to maintain an absolute difference between himself and the enemy, and to prevent a separation between himself and the sword that symbolizes his ties to Charles and God (filled as it is with precious relics, ll. 2345–48). The fractured horn also commemorates the fissure wrought by history in Roland’s vision of singularity. With the fatal horn blast, the ideology of transcendent community meets its own dissolution: the static singular (racine) remains in the company of the mobile multiple (errance). Roland turns immediately to create a similar breach in Durendal, striking it against a rock in the hope of preserving it from unworthy hands (ll. 2301–36). The idea to break the sword seems to come from the broken oliphant: their functions are similar (both can even be used as weapons) as are the consequences of their misuse. In seeking to destroy the sword, Roland intends its “death” to coincide with his own. Roland privileges his individual relationship to the object while overlooking its irrevocable ties to the divine (could a relic-laden sword really “serve” Saracens? [l. 2349]). The marks that Durendal leaves on the rock become durable traces of Roland’s contradictory acts [gestes].82 Committed to his own singularity and unable to destroy the holy blade, Roland covers it and the horn with his soon dead body (l. 2359). Roland becomes both relic and reliquary, encasing the symbols of his chivalric service in a last effort to compose his monumentality. This is the site to which Charles has been called to pray, the border he has been called to defend.83 When Charles arrives and reads the composition of Roland’s now historical body and the signs inscribed by the sword on the rock (ll. 2864–76), he becomes the first “singer” of the song of superlative service that Roland has imagined since the beginning.84 In order to defend this epic narrative, however, Charles will undermine the singularity so cherished by Roland. Soon after Roland’s death, Baligant arrives from Alexandria to aid Marsile. His arrival echoes the poem’s beginning, with a near repetition of the first lines (ll. 2609–10) and the deployment of familiar furnishings: “a white silk cloth” (l. 2652) and “a faldestoed made of olifan ” (l. 2653). Baligant’s accoutrements conjure conflicting associations, from the falsity of Marsile’s

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ivory to the faithful service of Roland’s, from exotic origins to familiar Frankish décor, from the “enemy” Marsile to the holy emperor Charles. Surrounded by the white of both silk and ivory, Baligant confounds simplistic moralization (of purity and majesty) as well as the mapping of the poem’s binaries onto colors (black versus white). Indeed, his trusted messenger is Syrian (ll. 3131, 3191) —a probable Christian who reveals an empire of multiple religious identities. It is worth noting how Bédier’s translation resists these interminglings: in modern French, Baligant and Marsile’s ivoire does not communicate directly with Roland’s olifant; their chairs become mere “seats” [sièges] while the other faldestoeds become “thrones” [trônes].85 These translations “demote” the ivory seats (along with their Saracen owners), introducing a series of distinctions unknown to the medieval text and diminishing ambiguity. Baligant’s arrival provokes a new battle and a new opportunity to sing the praises of Frankish “right” against Saracen “wrong.” Yet before this triumph can be secured, Charles’s handling of the oliphant engages a logic of exchange that destabilizes Roland’s bold claim of immutable differences. Just before the new battle, Charles arranges to replace the heroes previously presented as irreplaceable: he tells Rabel and Guineman to take the places of Olivier and Roland, one carrying “the sword and the other the oliphant” (ll. 3014–17). Charles does not specify which new hero receives which object, nor even which sword is meant (Olivier’s or Roland’s). These imprecisions, along with the gesture of substitution itself, overturn the ideology of differences proclaimed by Roland and embraced by Charles when he lamented after leaving Roland in the rearguard: “If I lose him, I’ll never have another in exchange [escange]” (l. 840). On one level, this overturning represents the advent of a postfeudal monarchy.86 Yet Roland himself considered substitution inevitable: “If I die, he who will have [Durendal] can say that it belonged to a noble vassal” (ll. 1122–23). Roland, then, easily imagines his seemingly singular role filled by another. Indeed, when he presented himself as an “example” (l. 1016), he cast himself as a locus of historical transfer —a relay between past and future. Critics have generally understood Roland to reject such views on the necessity of contingency and exchange, which other characters accept.87 And yet, these values are “something already there”88 — and they are not limited to the final episodes (or to traitors). Ultimately, Roland even equivocates on “right and wrong,” refusing to pass judgment on the Saracen who tried to

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steal his sword: “how did you ever dare to seize me, rightly or wrongly?” (ll. 2291–92).89 Dismissing categorical judgment, Roland comes to embody a France understood in “creole” terms — a France that includes multiplicity within its own singular imperatives. Charles’s other battle preparations witness further acceptances of exchange. The barons of France (l. 3084), for example, carry both French and Spanish swords (l. 3089). These “foreign” swords—whether purchased, traded, gifted, or taken as booty—once again collapse the visual and technological differences between the opposing sides. Their appropriation, moreover, indicates a Frankish acceptance of their equal (if not superior) value. This same laisse concludes with the description of Charles’s standard, the oriflamme that has changed name from “Romaine” to “Munjoie.” This “eschange” (l. 3095), like French swords for Spanish ones, or Roland for Rabel or Guineman, testifies to interchangeability both within the Frankish empire and between the empire and its enemies. Earlier, Archbishop Turpin rode into battle alongside Roland on a Danish horse (l. 1489), a detail that underscores the conquering army’s material promiscuity. The very mechanism of empire—conquest—means that collective identity is constantly under revision, the boundary between “us” and “them” constantly moving.90 Charles recognizes the primacy of his relations with “others” when he imagines having to answer for Roland’s death to “the foreign men” [hume estrange] (l. 2911). This dependence on “others” interferes with the ideology of a self-contained Frankish culture while also making it possible. During the battle, the oliphant performs these ideological contradictions. On the one hand, it stands out as a singular voice uniquely identified with Frankish prowess (ll. 3118–19, 3193, 3301–2, 3309–10). And yet, it is also an infirmed instrument (fenduz).91 The oliphant’s robust blasts defy the “split” created by Roland as he defended the difference between Frankish Christians and Arabian Saracens. In a sense, the “split” has been “healed” through substitution. The broken horn’s superlative performance enacts the desire to heal the ideological conflict between the value of differences (splits) and the value of exchange. It is itself a multiply split object: physically damaged and whole, foreign and domestic, as aligned with Roland as with Olivier, Ganelon, and Marsile. Conveyed to substitute heroes, its previous damage forgotten, the horn becomes the instrument of a history without end, a monument to perpetual becoming. Indeed, on one level the oliphant’s audibility in this second battle signals a beginning

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of “France”: a scene of foundational violence has been “forgotten” so that the Franks can continue to recognize themselves as partisans of the same community, unified in their resistance to a common enemy. As Charles’s reuse of the oliphant gestures toward collective amnesia, the substitute heroes themselves quickly fade from view. While Rabel and Guineman enter the battle first, and swiftly kill the first Saracens they meet (ll. 3345–68), Baligant soon kills Guineman (ll. 3463–68) and Rabel is never mentioned again. Accordingly, Charles abandons the philosophy of substitution and returns to absolutes: acting once again as the head of a consecrated community, he returns to the oliphant: “On the altar of Saint Sernin the baron, he places the oliphant full of gold and Saracen coins [manguns]: the pilgrims see it who go there” (ll. 3685–87). On the altar, the oliphant signifies both sacralization and the conveyance of tenure (historically, oliphants probably entered ecclesiastical treasuries as instruments of land tenure, later converted to reliquaries).92 Charles thus reconveys to God the lands Roland conquered on His behalf. Charles also transfers the horn to monumental time, where (the poem implies in the present tense) it remains just as Charles left it. “Translated” to relic status, the oliphant leaves history behind, “healed” of its many divided (split) associations. And yet “l’oliphan” cannot sever itself completely from the ivory seat around which Ganelon and Marsile agreed to plot Roland’s death. Even in this moment of transcendent symbolism, the ivory horn remains entangled in multiplicities that resist the univocal monumentality that Charles seeks with the sacral transfer. The horn’s contents on the altar also convey multiplicity. Mangun refers most probably to a kind of coin: Christians in Al-Andalus in the tenth and eleventh centuries used the term mancuso to refer to Islamic coins.93 Whether the term itself derives from Arabic or Latin, previous appearances of mangun in Roland associate it clearly with the passage of Saracen wealth into Frankish hands and specifically with the pact against the rearguard that led to Roland’s death. The sword Valdabron gives Ganelon contains, or is worth, “a thousand manguns” (l. 621); the narrator refers to Valdabron as the one who gave Ganelon a sword “and a thousand manguns” (l. 1570). Filling the oliphant with manguns, then, can signify the “containment” of Saracen forces by a triumphant Christianity (Saint Sernin, fittingly, was a Christian bishop martyred by pagans). Yet the fact that Charles may have received these manguns from Marsile (just as Ganelon did from Valdabron) maintains the memory of exchange. And if mangun refers specifi-

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cally to coinage from Spain, the pieces would bear the indelible marks of their Arabic origins. The oliphant on the altar, then, does preserve memories of Roland and his heroic defense of the empire (as many critics have emphasized)94 but it also speaks to the successes of his enemies. Given the conflicting associations of both the horn and its contents, Charles places the category of ambiguity itself on the altar in a gesture aimed at forestalling its troubling consequences for Christian hegemony. Sacralized container of tainted riches, the oliphant embodies one of Roland’s most basic lessons: differences are fragile, purity a fiction. Returning to the seat of the Frankish empire, Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Charles confronts directly the dilemmas posed to imperial ideology by relations with exchange and substitution: Aude’s marriage, Ganelon’s trial, Bramimonde’s conversion, and the ongoing holy war itself. Each of these events engages the conflicts that have traversed Roland from the beginning; their very narration performs entanglement, as their beginnings and endings overlap. At stake is the possible role of “foreign” elements within a Christian empire that can only fulfill its aspirations through conversion. While Aude ultimately upholds the poem’s surface ideology of absolutes and homogeneity, the other concluding events expose the failures of that ideology. In the final moments, the poem resists definitive conclusion partly by representing the Franks once again relying on material goods from “Arabia.” Ultimately, Roland depicts the unpredictable diversions of collective becoming. Arriving “home,” Charles returns to the logic of substitution that led him to transfer the oliphant from Roland to Rabel or Guineman: he greets Aude with a proposal to “exchange” Roland for his own son, Louis (ll. 3713– 15). Aude, however, remains faithful to the ideology of absolutes: declaring Charles’s words “estrange” [strange and foreign], she drops dead (ll.3717– 21). Aude’s sudden death demonstrates her rejection of substitution and her unequivocal allegiance to the logic of singularity. In this sense, she is “preux” like Roland rather than “sage” like Olivier.95 She underscores her role as Roland’s ideological double when she declares that he had sworn to take her as his per [peer] (l. 3710). She treats Roland as he (mostly) treated himself—as unique and irreplaceable, in a world that functions on conversion and substitution (where one per, even Roland, can be replaced by another). The disjunction between Aude’s and Charles’s reactions to Roland’s death mirrors the disjunction between these two value systems.96 The difference between Charles and Aude is not so much between the male and

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female experience of feudalism, but between an ideology of immutable differences (voiced by Aude and Roland) and a practice of multiple exchanges (proposed by Charles). This division, moreover, has run through the entire poem, and indeed through the characters themselves. Aude’s death, then, marks not a dramatic change in political values but a dramatic repetition of the ideological conflict that permeates the narrative. Charles works both sides of this conflict during Ganelon’s trial. In the course of these complex proceedings, it becomes impossible to align exchange with “right” or “wrong” since nearly everyone involved relies (inconsistently) on its powers in the pursuit of conflicting goals. Even God’s role in the conclusion remains uncertain—a claim asserted by the interested parties rather than a supernatural manifestation (like the halted sun that allows Charles to catch up to the fleeing Saracens).97 The drama derives from unpredictable shifts among different definitions of truth. The trial preparations, for example, begin at the end of a laisse that begins with Bramimonde’s transfer to Aix-la-Chapelle and includes the disposition of the relics of Roncevaux (the oliphant, the hearts of Roland and Olivier): this laisse reminds us that Charles traffics as easily in exchange (conversion, lending the oliphant to another knight) as he does in absolutes (sacralizing the oliphant on an altar, judging Ganelon’s guilt before the trial, ll. 3750–56). Meanwhile, the narrator reminds us repeatedly of Ganelon’s guilt, asserted since his first appearance (ll. 178, 1406–11, 3735, 3748, 3764). According to Roland’s dominant ideology, Ganelon must die as the archtraitor that the narrator has judged him to be from the beginning. In pursuing Ganelon’s death, Charles aligns himself with these absolute values; his methods, however, deftly manage several levels of exchange. Charles’s case rests on the assumption that his men act uniquely as his representatives (substituting for his personal presence). Ganelon’s defense, meanwhile, rests on the idea that Roland and the others exist autonomously. He can thus legitimately claim, following impeccable feudal logic, that he avenged himself through private warfare of specific wrongs committed by Roland as an individual: “I avenged myself, but there was no treason” (ll. 3757–78). This distinction between vengeance and treason depends on the interpretation of exchange values: does Roland only take Charles’s place, or did Ganelon’s public warning (ll. 300–1, 322–26) establish a separate horizontal relation between the two knights? At the time, Ganelon himself claimed to represent Charles and denied that Roland could take his own place on the mission to Marsile (ll. 296–99). The

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manipulation of feudal logic by all parties reveals the social system’s inherent instability: Ganelon, who previously lied about the danger facing Roland (ll. 1769–84), presents a truthful defense; Charles justly accuses him of plotting Roland’s death (while falsely claiming that he did so solely for financial gain, l. 3756). The trial itself functions as a referendum on the social principles that underlie these claims. As Peter Haidu notes, “It is in the trial scene that the latent conflicts we have traced at the margins of the text come to the surface.”98 In the end, though, these conflicts remain unresolved. While Charles certainly does assert his powers over those of his barons, he does not secure a stable polity. The trial’s political volatility surfaces immediately in the barons’ deliberations over how to judge Ganelon: rather than discuss the charges, they propose setting them aside [laisum le plait] (l. 3799). In effect, they refuse to rule on Charles’s case. They also deny the validity of the substitutive logic that underlies Charles’s demand for vengeance: “Roland is dead; you’ll never see him again; he will not be recovered for gold nor for riches” (ll. 3802–3). Since nothing can compensate for the specific loss of Roland, the barons propose reconciliation with Ganelon, which will permit the empire, and the family, to consign Roncevaux to the harmless past: “let’s pray the king to declare Ganelon quit this time; let him serve him with love and faith” (ll. 3800–1). The barons’ request to Charles states even more explicitly their perception that vengeance is beside the point: Sire, we pray you to proclaim the count Ganelon quit, that he then serve you with faith and love. Let him live, for he is a fine man. His death will not bring compensation, nor will we recover anything from monetary payments. (ll. 3808–13) Making no judgment of Charles’s complaint or Ganelon’s defense, the barons call for Charles’s personal clemency. They refuse the very idea of exchange as articulated by Charles (following in some ways Aude’s example).99 Instead, they favor a collective amnesia that sidesteps the ideological conflicts that drive the poem. Indeed, their phrasing repeats exactly Ganelon’s own description of his status prior to Roncevaux: “I served [Charles] with faith and love” (l. 3770).100 In short, the barons propose to proceed as if Roncevaux never happened. Here, we find another beginning of “France”—the personne morale that Bédier championed: the barons gesture toward national consolidation and peace, founding the Frankish

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community on the willful “forgetting” of traumatic violence. The Franks would henceforth “share” a history that included neither treason nor debilitating military defeat. The barons’ proposal is aberrant in that it asks for forgetting and for a nonviolent resolution to Charles’s demand for lethal vengeance. Their reasoning abounds in irony: they hew to a logic of absolutes that mirrors Roland’s in order to reconcile with Ganelon; they substitute one process for another (personal forgiveness for judicial procedure) in order to establish a polity immune to substitution. Charles himself claims the absolute right to demand substitutive justice. Despite all the claims of “right” and “wrong” that traverse these proceedings, moral distinctions repeatedly dissolve. At different moments, in different ways, for different reasons, Charles and the barons both rely on the logic of exchange; at others, they rely on absolutes. When the barons try to reason outside of these dichotomies by recommending clemency, Charles declares them traitors: “Vos estes mi felun” (l. 3814). The phrasing here emphasizes the individual nature of the affront (mi), aligning Charles most directly with Ganelon (who claimed a private relationship with Roland). In refusing the barons’ proposal, Charles discards the judicial process, which had developed to replace blood vendetta with law, divine intervention with human judgment.101 And yet, arguably, the barons themselves did not follow a judicial process: rather than rendering a verdict, they dismissed the very categories of guilt and innocence. Charles is rescued from this judicial impasse by Thierry, who refocuses the accusation on Ganelon’s relation to Charles, pronouncing the judgment that the barons avoided: Even if Roland wronged Ganelon, his service to you should have guaranteed him. Ganelon is a felon for betraying; toward you he has committed perjury and broken his oath. For this reason I judge that he be hanged and die and his body treated as one who has committed a felony. If there are any kinsmen who would like to contradict me, with this sword, that I have girded on here, I will guarantee my judgment at once. (ll. 3827–37) These charges repeat Charles’s own initial claim that Ganelon has wronged him by contributing to Roland’s death—and rebuff Ganelon’s effort to claim a direct conflict with Roland that did not involve Charles. According

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to Thierry, Ganelon’s obligations to Charles trump all private matters between his subjects, who exist primarily as extensions of their lord and only secondarily as independent actors.102 In promising to defend his judgment with his sword, Thierry dismisses verbal inquest in favor of trial by combat. By limiting legitimate challenge to family members, moreover, he follows the “feudal” logic of substitution and private warfare (even as he upholds the monarchical perspective).103 Indeed, when asked by Ganelon’s kinsman Pinabel to reconsider reconciliation, Thierry pointedly rejects the very principle of verbal exchange: “I will not hold counsel about it” (l. 3896). Thierry’s refusal of cunseill directly overturns the mode of political decision making (by both Charles and Marsile) that dominates the poem’s early episodes and instigates the fatal conflict that lies behind the trial. Pinabel answers Thierry’s challenge with what sounds like a reprimand to Charles: “Lord, this is your trial, so order that there not be such noise! I see Thierry here, who has made a judgment. And so I deny him; I will fight with him about it” (ll. 3841–44). Like Thierry and Charles himself, Pinabel recognizes Charles’s unique and personal responsibility for the proceedings. His call to stop the noise could refer to the loud sound of the Franks’ response to Thierry’s challenge (l. 3837) (most translators render noise as bruit in French or noise in English). But noise also refers to verbal quarrels and even insults, as in the modern French expression chercher noise [to seek out a quarrel]. Pinabel thus casts Thierry’s accusation as unnecessarily quarrelsome and verbose. In the context of absolute “rights” and “wrongs,” the exchange of words is meaningless, and Ganelon’s guilt only rumor [noise] until proven in physical combat. Tellingly, Pinabel notes that he sees Thierry (the only fact required to proceed with resolution by combat): he has no interest in hearing further about the dispute. Pinabel thus suggests that Thierry is mixing the protocols of two mutually exclusive judicial procedures (inquest, combat), and reminds Charles that he alone is in charge of the process. Pinabel has hoped to liberate Ganelon through combat from the beginning, even before the first council of barons (ll. 3789–91)—while the barons sought to avoid combat by not addressing the charges: “He would be most senseless who would fight about this” (l. 3804). Whether the barons imply that the defender would necessarily loose, or that it would be foolish to try to determine “right” [dreit], they clearly considered both inquest and combat undesirable. Only forgetting will protect the integrity of “France.”

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In a judicial duel, two knights serve as substitutes for the interested parties and rely on God to reveal justice through the physical contest. With the outcome secured by transcendent authority and the process by substitution, the judicium dei performs succinctly the ideological paradox that runs through Roland and that structures the Christian imperium: an affront to any Christian offends God; Charles must take vengeance because he serves this God; Christian service (war and conversion) depends on exchange (one death or religion for another); these exchanges take place in the name of transcendence. When Thierry prevails over the larger and stronger Pinabel, God seems to uphold Charles’s own absolutist claims— at least, the Franks attribute the victory to God (l. 3931). Yet exchange has also been validated (Roland’s life for Pinabel’s, Ganelon’s, and thirty others’, ll. 3947–74). The judicial combat does not resolve the fundamental ideological conflict; indeed, the narrator calls the outcome both “vengeance” and “justice” (ll. 3975, 3988). The result here is a sacrificial violence that endlessly defers actual resolution.104 And the moment that seemingly distances Charles most securely from his Saracen enemies actually illustrates their similarities: just as Charles (following no judicial precedent) sacrifices Ganelon’s thirty relatives (ll. 3947–59), Marsile readily sent twenty of his own young nobles as hostages to Charles, knowing they would die (ll. 40–46, 57–60, 143–50, 646, 679). Both of these group sacrifices aim to preserve the integrity of a polity (Spain, France). Through identical actions, each leader seeks to secure his difference from the other. Equivocations between differences and similarities permeate the smallest details of the judicial duel, undermining its apparent determination of absolute “right” and “wrong.” Pinabel (substitute for Ganelon) echoes Roland when he defends the right to fight for his family’s good reputation (ll. 3907–9).105 Meanwhile, Thierry (substitute for Charles) looks rather like a Saracen, with “black hair and a rather brown face” (l. 3821).106 Most revealingly, he is brought back triumphantly to Aix-la-Chapelle on “an Arabian mule” (l. 3943). At the very moment in which “right” and “wrong” have supposedly been divinely reestablished, an animal from the “wrong” side carries the brown skinned representative of “right”—apparently as a sign of how richly “right” he is. Indeed, superficially, Thierry looks very much like the messengers sent on “white mules” by Marsile to trick Charles into leaving Spain (ll. 89–92), or like Marsile’s nephew riding up to request the first blow against Roland (l. 861). Thierry’s Arabian mule also reminds us

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that 400 similar mules (along with 700 camels) were previously sent to Aixla-Chapelle carrying gold and silver from Marsile (ll. 31–32, 127–33, 645) and that Ganelon received ten such mules from Marsile as payment for his cooperation against Roland (ll. 652, 847). All this traffic in quality pack animals represents yet another dimension of material culture shared between the Franks and Saracens. The Arabian mule recalls also the possibly Arabian connections of the marten fur with which Charles wipes Thierry’s face after the duel (l. 3940): Ganelon also wore marten when Roland designated him as messenger to Marsile (l. 281).107 Charles’s fur thus recalls the scene that launched the conflict addressed by the duel Thierry has just fought. Martre also distinguishes the scene of “betrayal” (in which Ganelon wears sable) from the scene of “resolution” (in which Charles wears marten). Because marten and sable come from the same species, and Ganelon may in fact wear the same coat when he speaks to Roland as when he speaks to Marsile, the furs also bind together these three key scenes. The furs remind audiences of the commonalities that draw together actors fulfilling widely divergent roles (Roland, Ganelon, Marsile, Charles, Thierry). Tellingly, Charles discards his soiled pelts and dons fresh ones after cleaning Thierry’s face (ll. 3940– 41)—a casual sign of his intimate relations with exchange values. The occasional difficulty of distinguishing martre from sable only adds to the ambiguities of material culture implied in the fur trade itself. In these final moments of judicial resolution, these fleeting but telltale signs of crosscultural commerce signify the fragility of claims of “difference”—especially now that Aix-la-Chapelle and Saragossa are both Christian. The completion of Saracen conversion comes with Bramimonde’s baptism (ll. 3975–87). In contrast to Aude’s absolutism, Bramimonde embodies exchange values.108 Her conversion sets the scene for the unresolved entanglements of the poem’s final lines. Although Charles would prefer to end the sequence of endlessly renewed obligations—indeed, to die (ll. 2929, 2936)—he moves on, by divine order, to another battle against pagans (ll. 3995–98). He thus continues to live split between the two ideologies that are in conflict throughout the poem. In his desire to end his painful life, he resembles both Aude (who does die) and Bramimonde (who wished to, l. 2723); in accepting the new mission, he resembles both Bramimonde (who converted) and Roland (who declared total war on all pagans); in the “pain” of his “punishment” [si penuse est ma vie] (l. 4000), he even recalls

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Ganelon.109 The poem does not end with the “resolutions” offered by any of these other figures, but with Charles—a figure “characterized throughout by ambivalence, by ambiguity, by duality of value and meaning.”110 Despite Roland’s various claims to the contrary, Charles’s new obligations expose the battle of Roncevaux as nothing more than an episode among others in an eternal quest for greater Christian dominion. Even Bédier had to conclude as much, despite his devotion to the poem’s foundational status: “Thus it appears that the day of Roncevaux is only an episode in the long crusade in Spain, which itself is only an episode in the endless crusade of the two-hundred-year-old pilgrim [Charles].”111 Presumably someone else will now take Guineman’s place alongside Rabel, who themselves took the place of Roland and Olivier; someone else may carry their swords; new horns will be required to ensure communication. Charles’s army will pay its way in part with Saracen gold, carrying Islamic silks atop Arabian mules, perhaps even accompanied by camels. These are some of the tools that will support ongoing Frankish efforts to enforce cultural and religious differences. Their ambiguities ensure that Roland does not move toward any single point of resolution. Instead, it remains suspended among competing possibilities — a monument to creolization. Roland’s greatest ideological accomplishment, in the end, is not the establishment of any given model but rather the exposure of ideology itself as a category of ongoing social, political, and poetic struggle. The ambiguities of material culture in Roland encode tensions between the desire for stable differences and the experience of shared desires. These objects that, for the most part, form the poem’s background décor engage the ideological conflicts that openly occupy the foreground. The Franks’ manifest lack of anxiety around the adoption of “foreign” materials only serves to highlight the strenuous labor required to sustain claims of “difference.” The poem’s narrative structures encourage audiences to “hear” these claims as timeless verities, while diverting attention away from more complex histories. The poem minimizes, in other words, the presence of the “other” per se while maximizing the “message” of absolute truth and divine sanction. As such, it fulfills its “epic” role as a foundational text, defining a new community by establishing lines of exclusion. And yet, the peaceful homeland promised by this foundation eludes the Franks: the poem opens when they have already been in Spain for seven years; Charles accepts a peace proposal because he and his army long for home;

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the poem ends with Charles in tears as he leaves home again to defend Christian interests. The great heroic event at the center of the poem—the battle of Roncevaux — leaves France “empty” [deserte] (l. 2928). In this narrative arc, the Frankish community looses more than it gains. The “French nation” that so many observers, including Bédier, have found in Roland certainly does occupy the poem. Beyond the enticingly familiar and frequent name “France,” the nation begins to emerge in moments of forgetting —the broken oliphant that still plays, the barons’ refusal to judge Ganelon. These two moments overlook dramatic ruptures in favor of seamless continuities (the Franks’ always triumphed, no one ever betrayed Charles). Roland, though, does not recount the victorious accomplishment of this national being [personne morale] but the suspension of its becoming: in both cases, Charles insists on remembering (the oliphant rests on an altar, Ganelon dies a traitor). By remembering, Charles keeps “France” from consolidating into a stable and unified nation; he forestalls the institutionalization of Roland’s ideology. To read Roland as a French national epic, then, means forgetting what Charles remembered. It is this second order forgetting that turns the medieval epic into an instrument of modern nationalism. Roland does portray glimpses of a cohesive national community, but it also exposes the dangers and oppressions of collective amnesia. It captures moments of creolization, as well as their obsolescence. The poem, as it survives, because it survives, resists forgetting; it commemorates traumas alongside the desire to overlook them. It is no small wonder that it turned a young “creole” from Réunion into a medievalist.

· CHAPTER 6 ·

Postcolonial Itineraries

R

éunion clearly played important roles in Bédier’s thinking about the Middle Ages, just as an idealized vision of the Middle Ages shaped his youthful experiences on Réunion. Today, Réunionnais culture and French medieval studies both seem far removed from the terms of Bédier’s creole medievalism. And yet the products of his medievalism still circulate in ways both obvious and subtle. Likewise, Réunionnais of vastly different political persuasions have turned to both the Middle Ages and Bédier in efforts to define their identity within the French nation. On the one hand, those championing greater integration with France claim Bédier and his Middle Ages as proof that the island exemplifies France’s highest cultural ideals. On the other hand, those resistant to French hegemony claim Bédier and his Middle Ages as proof that even the nation’s highest cultural ideals include Réunionnais diversity. Contemporary appropriations of the Middle Ages on Réunion reshape the legacies of medievalism and colonialism developed during the Third Republic. On one level, the Middle Ages support conservatives who invoke “ancient France” to defend cultural and religious hegemony; they also tend to champion the “positive” value of French colonialism. On another level, the Middle Ages can signify a “savage” time before civilization, denying access to culture altogether (as attested by the Réunionnais migrant cited at the beginning of this book). In this perspective, the medieval conspires with colonialism to delegitimize those not from continental France. On yet another, more optimistic, level, the fact that the Middle Ages predate modern colonialism can facilitate thinking outside of colonialism’s rigid binaries (local versus national, insular versus continental, métissage versus purity, etc.). From this perspective, the medieval can trace a counterintuitive path toward decolonization. Appropriations of the Middle Ages, and of Bédier himself, on Réunion thus weave together various contradictory tendencies—affirmations of traditional pasts, postcolonial alien-

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ation, and dreams of radical futures. These appropriations, coupled with commemorative gestures toward Bédier from continental France, reveal both the strength and fragility of cultural memory. They create new “creole medievalisms” that both consecrate and defy the unification of France. The examples in this chapter illustrate multiple forms of creole medievalism on Réunion since 1950. They emerged, sometimes quite by accident, from my search for Bédier in public places and private archives. They represent a collection of lieux de mémoires manqué(e)s: both the places and the memories resist durable collective narratives. In the first instance, Bédier serves as an authoritative reference for activists promoting the Creole language as a vital component of Réunion’s future. Second, I turn to the pathways and monuments marked on Réunion and the continent by the name “Joseph Bédier”—streets, schools, and a public housing project. Lastly, I analyze the place of both Bédier and the Middle Ages in Réunion’s museum, the Musée Léon Dierx. Each of these scenes turns around language, oscillates between repressed and invented memories, and yokes the past to the future. They are argumentative and artistic, flamboyant and subtle, durable and ephemeral. They expose some of the vital threads that sustain the continual refabrication of identity on Réunion. “Notre parler créole”

Politicians and activists have enlisted the Creole language in their various (and often conflicting) efforts to define insular identity in the wake of départementalisation in 1946. The island’s administrative status has in fact remained a subject of debate: the “autonomous assembly” long favored by Réunion’s communist party was deemed unconstitutional in 1982; a proposal to divide the département in two failed as recently as 2000; in 2003, Réunion became the only overseas jurisdiction constitutionally barred from changing its administrative relationship with France (a response to the powerful specter of independence).1 Status debates have often pitted “autonomists” against “integrationists,” politicizing Creole speech. While partisans of political autonomy foreground Creole’s linguistic autonomy as a sign of Réunion’s unique cultural integrity, those who favor greater integration with continental France see Creole as an obstacle to national unity (in line with the Leblonds and others from the Third Republic). Both sides have turned to Bédier in different moments to support their positions.

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For integrationists, Bédier represents the value of Francocentrism and Réunion’s peaceful contributions to national poetry. In a newspaper article published in 1979, for example, Doctor A. Role inveighed against Créolie poetry as artificial, designed to “negrify” Réunionnais culture and promote Creole “patois” to the level of a language as the first step toward separation from France (despite the fact that Créolie poetry was mostly written in French). In defense of the authentic Frenchness of Réunionnais culture, Role cites the familiar canonical poets—Parny, Leconte de Lisle, Dierx, and “the great medievalist Bédier.”2 Like his Third Republic predecessors, Role mobilizes the eminent poets as guarantors of Réunion’s faithful devotion to France. Creolophone activists also claim Bédier’s legacy. As a self-proclaimed Creole speaker, he lends their arguments the authority of “ancient France” as well as a bilingualism sanctioned by metropolitan prestige. When it became clear in the 1970s that metropolitan programs designed to create a literate citizenry had met with little success,3 activists (primarily socialist and communist) advocated bilingual education to bridge the communication gap between monolingual Creole speakers and monolingual French speakers. As part of these arguments, teacher and novelist Axel Gauvin set out to document the structural and phonetic autonomy of Réunionnais Creole vis-à-vis French. Among the first examples cited for grammatical analysis is a note from Bédier to the Leblonds: “M’sié. [ Joseph Bédier de l’Académie Française, Administrateur du Collège de France] y fait bien compliment à vous, y fait dire à vous comm’ça, si z’aut’i vient voir à li un matin (10h.1/2), li sera bien content. J.B.” (Figure 35).4 For Gauvin, this message illustrates the Creole distinction between vous (singular formal) and z’aut (plural, formal or informal): Bédier’s note is addressed to an individual [vous], inviting more than one person [z’aut] to visit (in French, vous would serve both functions). (Addressed to “Marius-Ary Leblond,” Bédier’s note deftly negotiates the “plurality” of this “singular” person.) Of Gauvain’s other five examples of differences between Creole and French, only one other has a specific source — a linguistics textbook comparing French to Spanish (in other words, not about Creole). Bédier, then, functions as a uniquely recognizable Réunionnais authority, the prestigious native anchor for Gauvin’s defense of Creole. On Bédier’s actual card, the handwritten Creole elegantly surrounds Bédier’s preprinted name and titles, subtly challenging ordinary hierarchies between “national” and “local” cultures.

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Figure 35. Note in Creole from Joseph Bédier to Marius-Ary Leblond. Archives départementales de La Réunion, 7J1. All rights reserved.

Gauvin returns to Bédier as he argues that French and Creole speakers should learn each other’s language. Bilingualism will support social, economic, and political development, securing Réunion’s liberation from colonialism [du créole opprimé au créole libéré]. For Gauvin, Bédier represents the ideal yet to be widely attained — an intellectual fully conversant in both languages:

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Certainly intellectual workers have not all had the luck of a Joseph Bédier who declared: “There is only one language —I would not boast of it to my colleagues at the Academy—that I know how to handle well, and that’s our Creole.”5 Bédier refers to himself here as a second-language learner of French (like many provincial citizens of his generation, who spoke a local dialect prior to schooling in “French”). A few lines earlier in the letter from which Gauvin cites, Bédier performs his Creole bilingualism by laying claim to Réunion as “mon la case” [my house]; the Leblonds remember him regularly telling lengthy stories in Creole.6 Bédier made this unique claim to Creole fluency at the very moment he ascended to the highest ranks of the metropolitan elite as a member of the Académie Française. Bédier’s statement, moreover, was published by his childhood friend and cousin, Maurice des Rieux, in his socialist workers’ newspaper, La victoire sociale: it might therefore have reached an audience of nonelites closely identified with Creole expression.7 Gauvin draws on this dual legacy, borrowing the prestige of the Académie to support his own arguments in favor of bilingual education for the working class. He turns to Bédier as an iconic precursor for a Réunionnais culture that recognizes the primacy of Creole, thereby installing the medievalist as a model of postcolonial identity. Struggles for greater pedagogical and cultural integration of Creole have been ongoing since Gauvin first issued his call for bilingualism— and Bédier has remained an iconic figure. In 1999, Mèt ansanm, a group devoted to promoting kréol rényoné as a language with both a venerable past and a viable future, began publishing a magazine to promote Creole writing. The second issue of Nout Lang (Our Language) features a thematic selection of writings on “love.” The editors take an approach common in efforts to establish cultural legitimacy for minority languages: they include translations of major texts in established languages—in this case, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Goethe. Tellingly, this pantheon includes Bédier, with a translation into Creole of an extract from Tristan et Iseut — the romance that continues to secure Bédier’s reputation as a literary figure. On Réunion, the romance functions clearly like a medieval Paul et Virginie, rendered truly native to Réunion through Bédier’s authorship and the Creole translation. The other writer translated in the collection is Parny.8 Given the traditional prominence of the nineteenth-century poets Leconte de Lisle and Léon Dierx, the selection of Bédier and Parny

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indicates a particular type of literary politics — one solidly anchored in the prestige of the medieval (the time of national origins) and the eighteenth century (the time of the colony’s development and first recognized literary production). Together, Parny and Bédier resignify national culture as part of the local patrimony, while their translation into Creole weakens the hegemonic hold of “French” on “Réunionnité.” The year after these translations appeared, Mèt ansanm organized a public exhibit of Creole language and history, “Kréol rénioné, inn lang” [Réunionnais Creole, a language]. Summarizing the panels that illustrated historical figures who worked to promote Creole, Frédérick Célestin (a teacher of French and Creole) quoted Bédier’s statement of Creole competency from 1920, the same one featured by Gauvin.9 Bédier thus confers legitimacy on contemporary activists; he represents both national and local prestige, grounded in the popularization of medieval literature and the approbation of the metropole’s most venerable cultural institutions. Célestin’s appropriation of Bédier as a Creolophone draws the Francocentric patriot into the service of Réunion’s most disadvantaged populations, eliding the fact that Réunionnais Creole itself encompasses a number of regional and class-based variations. Bédier’s legacy, however, must remain ambiguous. A few months after the Mèt ansanm exhibit, Le journal de l’île de la Réunion featured a major review of his life in a Sunday edition.10 This two page reminder of Bédier’s contributions to medieval literature, national history, and local culture followed a four page critical investigation of Réunionnais race relations—just a few days before the December 20 commemoration of the abolition of slavery. The press thus reactivated Bédier’s nationalist legacy for an expanded insular audience, complicating his relation to contemporary linguistic and social politics. The appropriation of Bédier by Creolophone activists coincided with a revision of Creole’s legal status in the French national education system. As part of omnibus legislation passed in 2000, the government adopted a provision extending France’s 1951 Deixonne law on regional languages to the four overseas departments. Article 2 of the Deixonne Law provides for the use of “local speech” [parlers locaux] to facilitate primary school teaching; it applied initially to continental languages such as Breton and Occitan, and was extended to Corsican in 1974, Tahitian in 1981, and Melanesian languages in 1992. Creole thus gained for the first time the official status already recognized for various other languages used within France’s jurisdiction. The clause referencing the Deixonne law entered the

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new legislation as an amendment, strengthening what had been a general statement of support for regional languages. Thus even though more explicit provisions supported by Réunionnais and Caribbean representatives were not adopted (e.g., use of Creole for public functions, new commissions for adapting the national curriculum to local needs), the final legislation achieved greater legal specificity than initially envisioned by the national government.11 While these laws have limited impact on children’s daily school experiences, given the high proportion of teachers of metropolitan origin, they have fostered some changes in pedagogical structures and official attitudes. In theory, Creolophone instructors have much greater freedom for interacting with their students. The Ministry of Education initiated a new CAPES, the national program for certifying teachers, in 2001, creating an institutional path for the academic study of Creole.12 In 2002, the official publication of Réunion’s school system, Arum (no. 28), devoted an issue to new Creole initiatives; since 2004, Creole integration has been the centerpiece of efforts to increase academic success; in May 2007, for the first time, Creole could fulfill the requirement of a “second living language” on the Baccalauréat.13 And in 2005, Axel Gauvin offered creative writing workshops— in Creole and French —sponsored by the educational administration. Of course, the small number of Creolophone instructors limits program availability; even Creolophones disagree about the writing system.14 Many parents, moreover, object to Creole in the primary schools as a hindrance to French literacy.15 And the Baccalauréat and CAPES exams “nationalize” and homogenize the vast linguistic variety of Indian Ocean and Caribbean Creoles: the notion of a single exam for all these languages is as linguistically problematic as one for “romance languages” covering French, Italian, and Spanish.16 Meanwhile, Roland still appears on reading lists for French literature, serving much the same function as it has since 1880. It stands for the unshakeable imprint of an idealized national culture on an educational system that often still treats French history in the homogeneous terms defined in the aftermath of 1870. Avenue Joseph Bédier

Bédier remains a recognizable figure on Réunion even outside the political arena. Still known by some as the author of Tristan et Iseut, his name graces the landscape in several places. Bédier’s presence on the streets of

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Réunion originated primarily, if not solely, from partisans of greater integration with France, who deploy Bédier’s image (as the Leblonds did) as a sign of the island’s closeness to the metropole (using his name with the nearly opposite political goals of Mèt ansanm). These commemorative gestures echo those on the continent. In both settings, the word Bédier marks a desire for cultural memory, a desire nonetheless prone to fail with the passage of time (as Bédier himself might have predicted). Today, these minor monuments are likely to elicit blank stares or newly invented meanings. And yet the imperial visions that motivated Bédier’s inscription in the public sphere still shape postcolonial France. The combined effects of fading visibility and archival recovery illustrate how “memory” and “forgetting” together keep the terms of national identity open to contestation. In Saint-Denis, across from a bus station and on the side of a retaining wall between France Telecom and Crédit Agricole, a plaque commemorates the site where the Bédier family house once stood. In white letters etched in white marble, one could still decipher in 2003, through black graffiti: ici s’élevait la demeure où vécut en son adolescence JOSEPH BEDIER de l’académie française 1864–1938 ——— les fabliaux. tristan et yseult. les légendes epiques la chanson de roland etc. Naming Bédier’s most influential books, the inscription also names those linked to the island itself (see chapter 4). At the unveiling of the plaque on 25 June 1964 (in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Bédier’s birth), Hippolyte Foucque reminded his listeners that Bédier read Roland on this very spot at the age of fourteen, “on this terrace on whose wall we have just placed a commemorative plaque, and in the shade of the old mango tree of which there remains today only the dried-up trunk.”17 Foucque’s wistful comment on natural decay, and the absence of the house itself, suggest the labor of commemoration: without the plaque, nothing

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Figure 36. Plaque commemorating Joseph Bédier’s childhood home, Saint-Denis. Photograph by author, November 2007.

about the site recalls past glories (similarly, without Roland the glories of Roncevaux might not exist). The plaque is meant to resist the decadence of forgetting and promote durable awareness of Bédier’s (and Réunion’s) achievements. And yet the plaque itself cannot withstand the ravages of time: by November 2007, the graffiti had been cleaned, but the upper right corner had broken off (Figure 36). The commemoration of Bédier in 1964 took place in a particularly volatile political context. The direct organizers were ardent “integrationists” who participated in neocolonial efforts to impose French hegemony in the decades after départementalisation. Bédier’s plaque, for example, was presented by Henri Cornu, an administrator aligned with major sugar industrialists. Cornu agitated to eradicate Creole from the school system (in agreement with the educational inspector who famously declared in the early 1970s, “Creole must be shot”).18 Cornu also argued that the island’s

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early settlement had been purely French, refusing to recognize African contributions and métissage. For Cornu, anything that weakened the idea of French influence insulted Réunionnnais culture; he even aligned the eminently traditionalist Créolie aesthetic with the autonomist movement (because the Créolie poets recognized a local culture distinct from the metropole).19 Alongside Cornu, the préfet Alfred Diefenbacher gave a speech that made explicit the integrationist motives for commemorating Bédier. For Diefenbacher, Bédier embodies the “unity” and “cohesion” of the past and future; his scholarly efforts made the Middle Ages central to French nationalist feeling; the epic provides a living source of patriotism as “the Gilded Legend of the Nation” [la Légende dorée de la Patrie]. Diefenbacher emphasizes Bédier’s major discovery of the origins of France’s “cult of chivalry” in pilgrim sanctuaries: for conservative integrationists, Bédier facilitated a marriage of Catholic and creole values that made Réunion a perfect mirror of France. Accordingly, Diefenbacher defines Bédier’s insular identity as thoroughly national: Bédier and his famous compatriots (Leconte de Lisle, Dierx, De Mahy, and Lacaze) contributed to “this feeling of belonging to a community of values brought to us precisely by the history of the Nation and the example of our ancestors.” Bédier thus provides a model of patriotic devotion, showing young people that they can only succeed by remaining faithful to the past: those who travel “to the very heart of our country of France” can follow Bédier’s example of faithful service from a distance (“distance is not forgetting”).20 For Diefenbacher, Bédier exemplifies Réunion’s complete solidarity with France. The ideals articulated by Diefenbacher underwrote the social and economic policies of Réunion’s newly elected deputy, Michel Debré. The metropolitan Debré, who had no previous ties to the island, served as Réunion’s representative for twenty-five years (he had been prime minister under Charles De Gaulle). Debré and Diefenbacher both assumed their functions in 1963. Bédier’s 1964 centenary, in other words, took place precisely as integrationists consolidated their political hold. Following this line, the Académie de la Réunion celebrated in 1965 Parny, Leconte de Lisle, and the Leblonds; in 1968, the Académie honored them again (Leconte de Lisle for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth, the Leblonds for a new street named after them in Saint-Pierre).21 These events, which underscore Réunion’s ties to French national culture, coincided with aggressive programs to force further social integration. Debré

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promoted emigration to the continent, economic policies that deepened Réunion’s dependence on France, and metropolitan political hegemony.22 Diefenbacher, for his part, helped implement Debré’s controversial policies, actively resisted the laws on equal status for overseas departments passed in 1946 and 1948, and regularly interfered with free expression of the press.23 Just a few weeks before Bédier’s centenary, newspapers reported Diefenbacher’s intention to deport “unpatriotic” local functionaries.24 In this context, his comments on migration in his speech about Bédier take on a sinister undertone: he promotes Bédier’s legacy as a model of successful migration while pursuing forced removals of government employees and ordinary citizens. Thus, almost thirty years after Bédier’s death, the reputation that the Leblonds forged for him — as a symbol of Réunionnais Francocentrism — remained alive within right-wing neocolonial policies. In the years surrounding Bédier’s centenary, population pressures and metropolitan development projects dramatically changed the landscape of Saint-Denis. When Debré arrived, he set out to eradicate shantytowns [bidonvilles] and develop an urban infrastructure based on French norms.25 This meant government-sponsored apartment housing, accessed by newly paved streets. Civic planners took the opportunity to inscribe the island’s venerable cultural history into the topography of the future. In the heart of the reconstructed suburb of Le Chaudron, they named a narrow avenue that stretches along rows of housing projects Joseph Bédier. The street culminates in a dead-end loop (much further up the hill stands the university, built in the early 1970s as part of the same development plan). On one side of the Avenue Joseph Bédier runs the Rue François de Mahy (Bédier’s cousin and the island’s long-serving deputy); on the other side, Avenue Hippolyte Foucque (the prominent local teacher who championed Bédier’s reputation, and helped organize his centennial). By some fit of whimsy or savvy, Avenue Joseph Bédier crosses only two streets — the broad and bustling Avenue Leconte de Lisle at the bottom of the hill and the tranquil Avenue Richard Wagner toward the top. For anyone walking around with even a few fragments of Réunionnais history, this is a rich neighborhood indeed. People who know of Bédier tend to remember him as the author of Tristan et Iseut. He is thus known for his poetic production, in the tradition of Leconte de Lisle, a production that specifically countered the vogue of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Other than a few famous French writers (such as Voltaire and Maupassant), Wagner is one of the only street names not related to the island in some way. At the

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corner of Wagner and Bédier, then, we must think of Tristan and Iseult’s creole love story. In the late 1960s, when Bédier’s avenue opened, Le Chaudron housed some of Réunion’s poorest and most disaffected citizens. Le Chaudron remains “notorious” for civil unrest and high unemployment. In 1991, some residents protested violently when the metropolitan government forced the closure of the only outlet for television broadcasts in Creole—Télé Free-DOM (similar pirate broadcasts in other overseas départements continued to operate without interference). Founded by Camille Sudre (a metropolitan doctor who came to Réunion in 1976), Télé Free-DOM and its counterpart Radio Free-Dom met people’s desires for Creole language communication in the public sphere. During the protests, some participants reportedly blocked access to the neighborhood to those who could not speak Creole — a test that firmly aligned language, class, and réunionnité. While the television station never reopened, today Radio Free-DOM is Réunion’s most popular station, a unique space for “indigenous” expression.26 And the “events of February 1991” remain a palpable reference to enduring social and economic fissures.27 Avenue Joseph Bédier thus traverses a scene of acute and even fatal conflict between insular and metropolitan interests, and between French and Creole as markers of cultural allegiance. Bédier entered the topography of Paris under very similar social conditions. In the 1950s and 1960s, previously undeveloped areas near the Periphery, populated for decades by squatters and shacks, were brought into the urban grid in order to “civilize” the living conditions of provincial and colonial migrants.28 In both Paris and Saint-Denis, urban development led to new streets and new names. And in both cases, new construction did little to alleviate the social, economic, and racial tensions of peripheral neighborhoods. In Paris, the short Avenue Joseph Bédier occupies a somewhat barren corner in the thirteenth arrondissement just inside the Boulevard Périphérique (near Porte d’Ivry, not far from the former Musée des Colonies). The avenue exhibits many characteristics typical of Paris’s colonial topography: Bédier is a writer linked to the colonies, although he was not chosen for this reason (like Albert Camus, Saint-John Perse, and Leconte de Lisle); the avenue is located on the periphery rather than in the centreville; the street itself is practically invisible.29 Nonetheless, at the inauguration ceremony in 1956, Mario Roques (Bédier’s successor at the Collège de France) expressed deep faith in the power of commemoration: “You

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have linked forever this name to that of Paris, you have integrated it into the very being of the city.”30 All vestiges of colonial memory are forgotten here; henceforth, Bédier is only Parisian. The avenue, though, lies rather far from Bédier’s Parisian home at 11 rue Soufflot—truly the “heart” of the city, within sight of both the Panthéon and the Eiffel Tower, a neighborhood Bédier claimed to leave only rarely.31 Avenue Joseph Bédier, in other words, has nothing to do with the Paris that Bédier himself frequented, while it has everything to do with the colonial legacies that surrounded him and that continue to claim him. The newly urbanized spaces of the thirteenth arrondissement were filled with tall apartment buildings, designed to house the populations of the periphery in modernist style. And so, along Avenue Joseph Bédier stretch the buildings of the housing project Joseph-Bédier. In 2001, it was one of six projects targeted for rehabilitation by the newly elected left coalition city government.32 This initiative responded partly to the increased political importance of the banlieues, as the peripheral sectors gained influence in city elections due to their larger populations (a demographic fact that had long played into efforts to resist proportional representation). This new politics of the “periphery” favors the voices of the formerly disenfranchised. Today local governments tout the successful urban renewal for the entire “Bédier” neighborhood.33 Avenue Joseph Bédier in Paris, like its counterpart in Le Chaudron, thus occupies a site of ongoing social and political drama as different constituencies grapple with colonial legacies and the national future. If passersby and housing project residents have little opportunity to learn the history behind the name Joseph Bédier, the school children of the Collèges Joseph-Bédier stand a better chance. In Saint-André (Réunion), the school opened in 1962—around the same time as the street naming and the creation of the commemorative plaque. Its metropolitan counterpart is in the village of Le Grand-Serre (Drôme), where Bédier spent summers at the house of his wife’s family. The “twinning” of these two schools accomplishes the method of commemoration that Ary Leblond recommended in 1931 for colonial writers: erecting monuments that bring together metropolitan and overseas places associated with a writer (beginning with Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, linking Honfleur and Mauritius).34 The commemorative force of Bédier’s name, however, is relatively weak: in the Le Grand-Serre, students I met imagined that Bédier must have been the village mayor, despite both the nearby cemetery containing his

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descriptive headstone and an informative plaque on the wall outside the Bizarelli family house (mentioning both Tristan et Iseut and Roland).35 Nonetheless, the names attest to efforts to maintain Bédier’s memory in places that shaped his own memories. The tenuousness of Bédier’s identity in the places meant to commemorate his life speaks to the general interactions of memory and amnesia in the formation of collective identities. In the examples of Bédier’s name that I have discussed so far, individuals with vastly different interests “forget” various aspects of his identity in order to install “memories” congenial to their own visions of the future. The fragility of commemorative intentions are most evident on a Réunion monument that no longer bears Bédier’s name — the concrete wall erected in 1965 to mark the site of the island’s settlement in Saint-Paul. The monument and the celebration of the “tricentennial” of the island’s “first settlement” [peuplement] were projects of the same politicians who participated in Bédier’s centennial the year before.36 The date they chose marks the 1665 arrival in Saint-Paul of a group of French settlers sent by the king under the auspices of the Compagnie des Indes. As such, a 1965 tricentennial registers only white European settlement, excluding the ten Malagasy settlers who arrived in 1663 with two Frenchmen, as well as several different groups from the 1640s and 1650s.37 The event thus sparked charges of racism. Indeed, organizers underscored racial differences and French control of history by reenacting the settlers’ arrival — complete with a scene of their being greeted by the French and Malagasy settlers of 1663.38 The selection of actors for this invented encounter proceeded along strictly racial lines, as volunteers were assessed according to their respective “whiteness” and “blackness.”39 This performance of Réunionnais origins thus insisted on a binary model of racial purity, excluding métissage, Asians, and a host of other citizens. Taking place just two years after Debré’s arrival, the tricentennial underscored Réunion’s racial and cultural attachment to France in direct challenge to Réunionnais autonomists and the specter of independence. By activating the memory of European origins, and denying connections to Africa, organizers reacted to broader contemporary threats to French imperial sovereignty: Algeria, which had been departementalized long before Réunion (and in newly explicit terms in 1958), gained independence in 1962 after a protracted war; nearby Mauritius became independent from Britain in 1968, although some considered independence already imminent in 1965.40 Debré, tellingly, asserted Réunion’s devotion to France by

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quoting Renan: “The Nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.”41 Using the traditional terms of republican nationalism cherished by Bédier, Debré minimized the importance of geography to bring Réunion closer to France. Likewise, the minister of the overseas departments, Louis Jacquinot, declared the national “soul” completely unified and free of racial tensions: “France is undoubtedly the only country where problems of race and color never arise.”42 Jacquinot also identified Saint-Denis as the “town of Joseph Bédier,”43 a gesture that further embedded Bédier’s memory within the discourse of national integration and a “white washing” of Réunionnais history. The monument erected for the tricentennial solidified Bédier’s function as a guarantor of French purity and Réunionnais fidelity. It bore two inscriptions on either side of a bronze ship —on the left, a description of the 1665 settlers, and on the right a citation from Bédier’s speech to the Académie Française in 1921 (Figure 37):44 petite ile bourbon, sans cesse tendue vers la mere patrie et si eprise de l’amour d’elle qu’elle enivre tous ses enfants de cet amour. Joseph Bedier

Little Bourbon Island, incessantly stretched toward the motherland, and so taken with love for her that she intoxicates all of her children with this love. Joseph Bedier

Bédier’s citation not only addresses the island’s perfect devotion to France— as if the island literally “drugged” its inhabitants with French patriotism— but does so by casting the island back in time to the reign of the Bourbons (descendents of Saint Louis). As “Bourbon” displaces “Réunion,” creole medievalism becomes synonymous with the aspirations of integrationist politicians like Diefenbacher and Debré. The monument, through Bédier’s citation, actively promotes a collective memory that legitimizes the island’s French assimilation and silences all other identifications. Today, the 1965 monument stands as a rather desolate hunk of concrete behind the back wall of the outdoor market, its divisive legacies effaced: at some point, Bédier’s name and the other bronze letters were removed

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Figure 37. Monument to the 1665 settlement of Réunion, bearing an inscription by Bédier, Saint-Paul, 1965. Archives départementales de La Réunion, 13Fi45. Préfecture de La Réunion. All rights reserved.

(Figure 38). In the intervening years, the “center” of memory has shifted literally down shore, toward histories that survive despite generations of casual and purposeful forgetting. Since 2005, a new monument titled Saint-Paul à l’origine du métissage [Saint-Paul at the origin of métissage] locates the town within a multiracial and multicultural genealogy, rather than within a strictly Francocentric orientation (Figure 39). The installation “replies” to a monument erected in 2004 in Fort-Dauphin, Madagascar; together, they mark the ports of the slave trade between the two islands. A few weeks after the inauguration of the St. Paul monument, the annual celebration of “December 20” commemorating the abolition of slavery included a reenactment of disembarking slaves—a direct contrast with the disembarkment reenacted in 1965 (an event long forgotten in public memory).45 Tellingly, during December 2005, controversy raged on Réunion and elsewhere in the wake of a provision in a national law, adopted in February 2005, that required educators and researchers to focus on the “positive effects” of colonialism.46 The disjunctions between local

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Figure 38. Monument to the 1665 settlement of Réunion, without Bédier’s inscription,  Saint-Paul. Photograph by author, November 2007.

“progress” toward public recognition of complex racial histories and national “regression” toward state sponsored racism witness the ongoing traumas of colonial slavery. Traces of those traumas surfaced literally in Saint-Paul in February 2007, when a storm disinterred remains from a previously unknown eighteenthcentury slave cemetery.47 Officials reburied the bodies in November 2007 and installed a commemorative marker, registering once again the contested racial memories embedded in the Saint-Paul shoreline. The bones that surfaced in 2007 testify to the unexpected resurgence of forgotten voices, while the (so far) durable concrete of 1965 demonstrates the mutability of the most solid constructions. In this tension between memory and forgetting, between oral and written history, certainties of all kinds dissolve into perennially precarious gestures of becoming. Musée Léon Dierx

The commemorations discussed so far focus primarily on Bédier, and only secondarily on the Middle Ages. The founding collections of the Musée

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Figure 39. Monument commemorating the origins of métissage, Saint-Paul, 2005. Photograph by author, November 2007.

Léon Dierx, organized by Marius and Ary Leblond, explicitly engaged both: writings by Bédier and copies of medieval cathedral statuary. Exhibits of these items translate creole medievalism on multiple levels, returning Bédier’s scholarship to its tropical origins while reconnecting creole chivalry to its distant historical origins. Since its 1911 opening, the museum’s ethos has moved gradually from colonial celebration toward postcolonial interrogation. The medieval statues have followed this route, culminating in a 1994 installation piece by the Paris-based Turkish-born artist Sarkis (b. 1938). Understanding this process of resignification requires a return to the “creole” politics of culture during the Third Republic and the world of the Réunionnais diaspora that included Bédier as one of its most prominent members. The Leblonds envisioned Réunion’s museum as the institutional consecration of the island’s privileged place in the French empire. As one of the oldest colonies and the center of French expansion in the Indian Ocean, they considered that Réunion should be the first colony to possess a museum: history had “destined” the island to become the “intellectual

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metropole” of the Indian Ocean. Only by cultivating France’s cultural patrimony, the Leblonds felt, could Réunion hope to compete with Madagascar, which received more resources and attention from the national government.48 The Leblonds also posited that the museum would safeguard the “creole race”: We will attract back to their homeland, through the prestige and fascination of history, several of those island children who have gone to seek their fortune far way and who, uprooted, dry up the sap of their stock . . . The splendor of nature does not suffice to retain men’s sons at home . . . By [the museum’s] harmonious solidarity, may young Réunionnais, admiring the works of their race, rise up to the desire to create such beauty!49 Inspired by national art, young people will not only strive to honor their heritage with their own creations, they will do so on the island itself; a successful museum will stem the tide of emigration that weakened white colonial privilege. For the Leblonds, the museum was only the latest example of the capacity and duty of the “creole race” to “give an example” whereby others could learn exemplary colonial conduct and the highest cultural values. The museum would support Réunion’s status as a “second France” by including reproductions of famous works from throughout European history (including the Middle Ages) as well as original modern art. European art would instill European culture in those who happened to live in other climes. Impressionism, for example, would train the creole eye, blinded by the stark tropical sun, to appreciate nuances of light; classicism and romanticism would teach “masculine” composition to correct the languid “femininity” of the tropical landscape. The Leblonds envisioned children, both white and black, as the prime beneficiaries of these artistic lessons: white children would become “more graceful and active” by admiring the beauty produced by the masters of their race; black children, “sensitive to imitation, will be refined, fortified, by contemplating the love of the great French artists, the purity of their passions, the nobility of their conceptions.”50 Art, then, will inspire colonial harmony, resolving social ills and moral failings of all sorts. To realize this imperial dream, the Leblonds enlisted the aid of prominent creoles—including Bédier, Dierx, Foucque, Guist’hau (a former class-

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mate of Bédier’s who, as a government minister, allocated public funds for the museum),51 and the island’s elected officials (including Gasparin).52 Bédier’s stepfather Du Tertre, as mayor of Saint-Denis at the time, also helped promote and organize the museum.53 Another active organizer and Réunionnais creole, Jean Ricquebourg, used his position as a highly placed administrator in French Indochina to generate support. He addressed his call for subscriptions to the Réunionnais diaspora in Asia, identifying Bédier, “our learnèd medievalist,” as one of the museum’s patrons. When the museum opened, it included a section showcasing Réunionnnais artists—with Bédier alongside Leconte de Lisle and Dierx in an exhibit of “creole literature.”54 In addition to Bédier’s publications, the museum possessed his prizewinning essays from the lycée.55 Early press reports mention Bédier among the island’s most recognizable literary luminaries: “It is literature, everyone knows, which has given us our sweet glories—the Leconte de Lisles, the Léon Dierxes, the Joseph Bédiers, the Jean Ricquebourgs—all celebrated and collected by the Leblonds.”56 In the museum, Bédier—as poet and medievalist—sustained Réunion’s value to the empire. He served as the icon of imperial glories that originated in eleventhcentury Europe, lending a venerable medieval past to the Indian Ocean’s “second France.” The Leblonds accorded medieval art a place of honor in their vision of colonial culture. They thus commissioned plaster replicas of medieval cathedral statuary for the museum: “we intend to present on Réunion almost exclusively gothic reproductions that accentuate, with the elegance and yearning of faith, our feeling of grace, goodheartedness, and mischievousness through resignation and mysticism, intelligence and amenity.”57 This syntactically exuberant statement attributes comprehensive aesthetic powers to the medieval statues. The reproductions, pledged by the government from the very beginning, include a selection of eighteen figures from several different sites (including Chartres and Notre-Dame de Paris) representing romanesque and gothic styles from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries.58 These reproductions extend the museum’s reach to the very origins of French identity, rendering it a complete microcosm of national culture. Indeed, the Musée Léon Dierx exhibited the statues in 1987 to commemorate the millennial anniversary of the Capetian monarchy, including a French royal genealogy from Clovis (465) to Jean d’Orléans (b. 1965).59 This exhibit reinvested Réunionnais identity with an aristocratic inheritance, testifying to the durable legacies of creole chivalry. In various

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ways, the medieval replicas conjoin Réunionnais identity to the national and colonial strains of Bédier’s own creole medievalism. Early museum visitors did not necessarily share the Leblond’s enthusiasm for the medieval statues. They prompted one observer to protest school children’s visits to the new museum: I am formally opposed to your bringing my daughter [to the museum]. She could be frightened at the sight of the enormous mounted pieces that represent on the verandah the saints of France’s cathedrals. May my little girl be spared the sight of the small horrors that decorate the museum and are its most beautiful ornament — unless the chaplain, wishing to give the students an idea of the ugliness of mortal sin, wishes to compare it to the paintings.60 This concerned parent continues in this vein, with a mordant critique of the ill effects of modern art on children’s sleeping habits and digestion. His disgust, however, originates with the “frightening” nature of medieval art, perhaps specifically when sited in the quintessential creole space, the verandah. For this parent, the statues purvey the opposite of admirable civilization: they represent the “savagery” of a barbaric medievalism, associated elsewhere with “primitive” colonial cultures. Clearly, the museum’s reception did not always, if ever, fulfill the organizers’ dreams. More divisive than harmonious, its effects on the general public suggest once again the fragility of cultural memory projects, which can veer quite far from their intended purpose. By 1953, less than a decade after the island’s départementalisation, much of the founding collection (including the Leblonds’ beloved exhibit of Paul et Virginie) had been consigned to permanent storage.61 The newly postcolonial museum suffered a severe space shortage with the arrival of a major donation of original works collected by Ambroise Vollard, given by his brother Lucien in 1947 at the urging of Ary Leblond.62 The arrival of quality metropolitan art consigned local art to the almost literal dustbin. That this major shift in the museum’s collections took place at precisely the moment when Réunion moved administratively “closer” to France captures the dangerous advantages of the strategy that led politicians to seek départementalisation in the first place: in exchange for greater national “privileges,” Réunion lost the status that formerly distinguished it from

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ordinary provinces. Ary Leblond specifically compares the newly “degraded” museum to other French provincial institutions, finding it a weak reflection of the grandeurs of its metropolitan counterparts.63 Indeed, the museum’s perceived “fall” to the status of a low-grade provincial art gallery mirrors the broader realities of Réunion’s place in postimperial France. The medieval replicas fared better than the local art, remaining continuously on display until 1992 when the museum took a decisive turn toward postcolonial museology and began commissioning artists to reflect on Réunionnais identity.64 The statues then returned almost immediately in one of these new commissions, installed in June 1994 (the same month as the celebration of Leconte de Lisle’s centennial). Created by Sarkis, the installation brought the medieval statues together with a collection of funerary sculptures [aloalos] from Madagascar purchased by the museum in 1970 (which turned out to be poorly executed counterfeits and were immediately relegated to permanent storage).65 Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion [The Seven War Treasures of Réunion] thus conjoined a set of familiar artifacts (associated with the museum’s founding lessons of French superiority) with a second set rarely seen (and emblematic of French ignorance). The seven new sculptures each included one medieval and one Malagasy figure placed back to back; between them a screen of wire mesh in the shape of a cross supported wings made of florescent tubing (Figure 40). Each ensemble stood on a rolling platform, stabilized by a series of taut wires and trailing an electric cord that lit the wings. Distributed in an irregular pattern around the edges of a rectangular room, the seven sculptures faced a central platform covered with a seemingly random scattering of watercolor paintings (related to Sarkis’s personal and artistic life)—pierced by a grouping of knives (bearing the names of cities Sarkis has visited). Red and green lighting, and music by Granmoun Lélé (a popular singer of maloya, a musical style traced to Malagasy slaves) completed the sensory experience.66 Sarkis’s installation received unqualified praise in the local press as a positive representation of multicultural reconciliation.67 When one of the sculptures was presented in the “France” section of the Johannesburg Biennale in 1995, organizers described the medieval and Malagasy figures as mutual reflections and credited the sculpture with “decentralizing” Western art in relation to other cultures.68 The director of the Musée Léon Dierx who commissioned the installation, François Cheval, imbued the project with a sense of hope for cross-cultural communication: “Orphan

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Figure 40. Sarkis, Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion, Musée Léon Dierx (June 1994). Copyright 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photograph from Banque d’Images, ADAGP / Art Resource, New York.

objects, they become, thanks to the neon wings and the metallic structure on wheels, metaphors of the reconciliation of white and black, large and small, profane and sacred, totemism and monotheism, etc.”69 Cheval’s sense of the sculptures’ postcolonial accomplishment rejoins, in an uncanny echo, the Leblonds’ original ambitions for the display of European masterpieces: they all seem to believe that aesthetic experiences can create racial harmony by reforming memories of colonial history. Cheval also compares the statues to those of Tristan and Iseult, layering the drama of impossible yet faithful medieval love over the statues’ many other connections.70 In this perspective, the seven new sculptures present a postcolonial version of the museum’s founding colonial aspirations, secured by an idealized Middle Ages. Rather than breaking with colonial formations, this postcolonial appropriation shares in their aesthetic logic. In both moments, fragmentary copies of medieval art stand in for ancient French values — rerooted in the tropical landscape as the errant sources of “creole medievalism.” Sarkis himself invests “war treasure” with the optimistic potential to forge new memories and recover old ones from histories of violence. He has been working with the concept of Kriegsschatz (war booty) since 1976

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(inspired by an exhibition of African and Oceanic art in Berlin), and has used “found memories” throughout his work.71 For Sarkis, Kriegsschatz designates durable memories that survive transhistorical violence: The concept of Kriegsschatz is intimately tied to the history of cultures and civilizations . . . it designates the symbolic importance that works of art have in them as objects of transaction, possession, and appropriation, especially in the course of the conflicts, struggles, and wars that peoples have not ceased to undertake through the centuries: “war treasures” have this particularity of resisting invariably the destructions, deaths, and massacres.72 Sarkis treats surviving objects as reliable vehicles for distant memories, witnesses to forgotten histories, and icons of cultural resistance. At the time of the Réunion exhibit, he emphasized the “victor’s” view: “Kriegsschatz . . . what one discovers and seizes before adorning oneself with it, in a sign of victory, as witness to power.”73 From both sides of this power equation, objects bear witness: “The works displace themselves with their experiences. Experiences become memory. Each work has its memory— which is perpetually enriched from one place to another.”74 This durable core of untouchable memory lends Sarkis’s Kriegsschatz a resilience that points toward redemption and recovery. His installations put these memories back in motion by reconfiguring the objects themselves, provoking new experiences through unexpected juxtapositions: the installations function as purposeful lieux de mémoire, in which art makes the past readable.75 Through these reappropriations, Sarkis seeks to resist the “fixing” of identities and to liberate the store of experiences accumulated in displaced objects.76 In a sense, Sarkis pursues in art what Glissant articulates in poetics (see chapter 5). His work provides another revealing frame for the representation of war booty in Roland— and for Roland itself as a “war treasure.” With Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion, Sarkis exposed the museum itself as a site of foundational violence—a particularly poignant project in an institution born of imperial ambition. The very idea of Kriegsschatz addresses museums’ general complicity with historical oppression—for they originated as storage vaults for war booty: “When you remove objects from their context and you take them somewhere, it is at that moment that suffering begins.”77 They can thus easily contribute to cultural stagnation. In

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projects like Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion, Sarkis uses museum collections along with his own extensive repertoire of objects to “curate” installations that interrogate the museum’s traditionally sacral function.78 These interrogations are particularly potent when, like Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion, they involve objects usually consigned to invisible immobility in storage.79 In the case of the medieval and Malagasy statues at the Musée Léon Dierx, the objects cannot even be exhibited in conventional terms: “simulacra of art,” they are embarrassing deceptions (especially the aloalos, which were sold to the museum as historical artifacts). By setting these “frauds” together, Sarkis sought to redeem them for a new “truth.”80 As replicas of absent art, the materials of Sarkis’s seven “treasures” set in motion multiple geographies—Réunion/Bourbon, Madagascar, continental France. They also reference multiple institutions: colonial slavery (the forced displacement of Malagasy people beginning in the seventeenth century), the Catholic Church (religious art from the twelfth century to the fifteenth), and the museum itself (acquisitions from 1910 to 1970). These multiplicities resist the “fixing” of historical relations. The sculptures’ wheeled platforms symbolize this persistent mobility through a conflicting set of associations—ships, funeral convoys, wheelchairs, storage carts, etc.81 If Sarkis’s own discussions of Kriegsschatz emphasize memory, his Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion also bears witness to the corrosive powers of forgetting. Loss, as well as accumulation, goes along with displacement, as one “memory” erases, modifies, or repeats another (as illustrated by the circulation of expropriated goods in Roland). From this perspective, Sarkis’s Kriegsschatz depend on discontinuity, erect barriers, and open fissures of amnesia. Indeed, a dystopian reading of Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion necessarily accompanies the utopian one embraced by Cheval and others. The icons of Malagasy and French religious culture, for example, face away from each other in a static “back off,” cohabitating their individual platforms without interacting. The prospects for “balanced” communications are further infirmed by the substantial difference in size between the French and Malagasy forms: looking at the French side, one cannot see the smaller Malagasy figure, whereas from the other side the contours of the French saint frames the diminutive aloalo. The wire mesh that both separates and links the two figures also materializes a cultural double bind: partly transparent, the mesh maintains open perspectives; crisscrossed by solid lines, it forms a barrier. The modern technology of neon that traces

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the contours of the wings evokes a nondenominational hope for transcendence. Yet this hope is literally enmeshed, trapped in the cold metal of a would-be reconciliation: the figures share a single pair of wings that neither one possesses. In all of these ways, differences meet but do not speak in the seven sculptures of Sarkis’s installation. The sculptures, moreover, are not technically Kriegsschatz: although the “original” sculptures all came to the island as the general result of voluntary and forced human migrations, as replicas and counterfeits they were in fact made to travel in place of originals that have not moved. Even before Sarkis, they existed first and foremost as the remains of institutional efforts to commemorate distant origins, severed from the sacral functions of their originals. They are, in this sense, indigenous to Réunion—“creole” icons rather than survivors of civilizational clashes. They are at once full memories (repetitions of originals) and empty of history (made for export consumption). The copies embody, in ways that “original” spolia do not, the losses that accompany commemorative desires. The violence of forgetting appears emphatically in Sarkis’s centerpiece — a raised platform with a menacing arrangement of knives. The winged sculptures, with their wheels, appear temporarily arrested in their migration toward (or from) this square island. The knives mark this island as a site of violence. Although used by Sarkis in a previous installation,82 on Réunion the knives evoke most immediately the sugarcane harvest— and the many hands that may have held them (slaves, indentured laborers, Sarkis himself). They call up images, if not memories, of the strike of metal on cane as well as the violent extraction of the people made to wield such tools. If remembered fully, Réunion’s brutal histories of slavery and indenture do violence to the dream of reconciled futures attributed to Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion. This violence also touches the artist and his audience: visitors clustered around the centerpiece must look away from the sculptures of “reconciliation”; to view the sculptures, they must disregard the knives. The resultant tension in perspective and individual memory processing creates a complex layering of identity dreams, alternately failed and realized, utopic and distopic. Interestingly, Cheval does not mention the centerpiece of knives in his letter to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (or in the exhibition catalogue): the metropole prefers more uplifting visions of multiculturalism, frequently holding out Réunion as a model for the nation’s harmonious future.83

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The equivocations of cross-cultural and transhistorical communications symbolized in the physical structure of Sarkis’s installation were also transmitted in the soundscape —the maloya music by Granmoun Lélé (d. 2004). Developed initially from Malagasy religious rituals by slaves in the eighteenth century, maloya music and dance emerged from the historical pressures of French colonialism and the creative energies of resistant people. Its practitioners endured new forms of oppression in the postcolonial period. The communist partisans of insular autonomy made maloya a symbol of their cause, provoking the music’s censure throughout the 1960s and 1970s (most aggressively under the préfet Jean PerreauPradier, who preceded Diefenbacher). Open public expression became possible only in the 1980s as the new socialist government in Paris ceased official pressure on the communists and also decentralized cultural programming.84 Since then, performers such as Granmoun Lélé, Firmin Viry, and Danyèl Waro (a “white” creole) have secularized and popularized the music. It now functions as the sonorous sign of a multiracial réunionnité — what Françoise Vergès and Carpanin Marimoutou have called “the common space of a Réunionnais ethos.”85 Thus from its beginnings and into present, maloya has performed anticolonial resistance. Deep in its history, maloya is also a contemporary of medieval Europe. In Sarkis’s installation, Lélé’s music, sung in Creole, wafted over the poised replicas of ancient Malagasy and French religious figures, and over the knives. An aural reminder of displacement and resilience, Lélé’s music conjoined (wittingly and unwittingly, joyfully and sadly) many of the transhistorical and transcultural dimensions of contemporary réunionnité—ancient rituals, multiple migrations, brutal oppressions, liberating celebrations, collective responsibilities, and individual imaginations. Sarkis’s Les sept trésors de guerre de La Réunion ultimately performed transhistorical collocations that invite reflection on the forces and evasions of memory (including medieval memory) in postcolonial society. The multiple layerings of “positive” and “negative” effects engage history as both an irremediable obstacle and a necessary companion to the future. The installation — itself ephemeral—testifies to a durable colloquy between the medieval and the colonial, in which it becomes difficult to say which came first, in which both are simultaneously “cultured” and “barbaric.” Their interdependence on Réunion stretches back (at least) to the chivalric pedagogy of the nineteenth century. They remain linked in post-

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colonial visions that recognize human diversity in ways that colonial chivalry never did. Commemorations — streets, schools, public buildings, monuments — teeter between the meaningful and the meaningless, the permanent and the ephemeral. Bédier, in the present, means many things and also nothing. As an urban opportunity zone or middle school, Bédier trades the richness of complex memory for the apparent simplicities of cultural amnesia. Bédier himself sometimes yearned for just this kind of oblivion, sometimes mourned it. The vagaries of Bédier’s own reputation demonstrate, as profoundly as any medieval tradition, the truth of his conclusions on oral memory: “Preserve thus a little while a repository of anecdotes, soon reduced to insignificance, that’s all that oral tradition, left on its own, can do.”86 The same holds for memory projects in any form: their efficacy depends tenuously on the random recollections and whimsical attentions of readers, viewers, and passersby. In constructing here the traces of commemorative gestures that have engaged Bédier’s posthumous image, I hope to have illustrated how desires for durable memory (the basis of collective identifications) contend with equally powerful desires for new beginnings. Precisely because Bédier rarely if ever signifies in the streets in the ways that his partisans envisioned, his commemoration mirrors the structure of historiography. For the Middle Ages (or any other historical period) perpetually take on new significations and shed old ones (as Sarkis demonstrates beautifully). The work of historical analysis recombines existing elements, fabricating new narratives that themselves become new objects in ongoing elaborations of past and present identities. Bédier and his Middle Ages provided particularly potent “memory fictions” for the Réunionnais diaspora during the Third Republic. They continue — haltingly, erratically, furtively—to relate medievalism and colonialism to the futures of Réunion, France, and medieval literature.

· AFTERWORD ·

Medieval Debris

M

y narrative of Bédier’s creole Middle Ages has emerged from the traditional methods of philology, turned against the security of origins. Placing colonial history in relation to medieval studies during the Third Republic, I have sought to establish an archive of “local knowledge” that encompasses multiple places and times simultaneously. Françoise Lionnet has shown how the lack of such knowledge about Réunion has often led critics astray in their interpretations of French literature and culture.1 Given the generally “minor” status of Réunion from metropolitan and francophone perspectives alike, it is no wonder that Bédier’s creole identifications have been relatively unknown. Imagining a medievalist from the perspective of Réunion thus requires a sustained and tenuous effort to move beyond the bounds of the dominant discourses of colonialism and medievalism alike. Creole medievalism illustrates the many small challenges of recognizing missing archives. In writing of and around Bédier, I have frequently placed personal anecdotes in relation to broader historical developments. The micro and macro levels of history are of course equally opaque, relations between them as prone to tenuous imagination as to banal certainties. No single event, statement, or relation explains something as intimate and mysterious as a “life,” but collectively they give texture to private and public histories. As a form of historiography, biography constructs a narrative of identity that, like all histories, can be rewritten and reimagined. In Bédier’s case, I have tried to multiply perspectives without reducing them to a single view and to connect these biographic idiosyncrasies to a broader argument about the place of both Réunion and the Middle Ages in France since 1870. These considerations, in turn, have led to reflections on the durable and uneven effects of colonial histories in contemporary culture and scholarship. In the process, I endeavored to disturb the ideological work of origins in personal, national, and literary histories.

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Bédier’s influential medievalism resides simultaneously on Réunion, in Paris, during the Third Republic, and within French literature. Its formation and impact derive from the multiple migrations that made these collocations possible. Bédier’s literary histories reflect, and reflect on, the many meanings of French imperialism, viewed simultaneously from the eleventh century and the twentieth, from France’s southeastern colonial edge and its metropolitan center. Proud of his French heritage and nostalgic for “Bourbon,” Bédier vigorously defended French sovereignty while resisting the empire’s multicultural dimensions. His letters, speeches, and scholarship reveal a life shaped by irreconcilable desires for both creole and national belonging. Simultaneously immigrant and emigrant whether he travels toward Paris or Saint-Denis, Bédier lived with a fragmented sense of “home” that could never be resolved. He committed to personal strategies of forgetting while incessantly proclaiming the persistence of memory. The “forgetting” so fundamental to collective political and ethnic formations was both a personal effort and a historical theory. The trajectories of colonial natives like Bédier reconfigure some the most seemingly obvious structures of imperial analysis—first and foremost the clear division between metropole and colony. This distinction does not so much describe imperial relations as prescribe them. It masks multiple layers of national and regional identities, all variously constituted through displacement. Bédier, for example, moved through at least three diaspora communities: the Réunionnais of imperial Paris (1860s), the Europeans of Réunion (1870s), and the Réunionnais of republican Paris (1880s and beyond). He remained throughout a citizen of France, an invisible migrant in his own homelands. His experience points to the limits of “common Europeanness” and to the “uneven positionality” of “whiteness” in colonial contexts.2 The culture and politics of creoles, including those most committed to the positive values of colonialism, shape a nuanced history of imperial racialism. As Bédier and his fellow creoles migrated between the Indian Ocean and the northern continent, they repeatedly encountered Euro–French culture as both familiar and awkwardly alien. They affirmed genealogical and cultural continuities through the prism of dislocation and métissage. In the perpetual transit of creole migration, every move closes one rupture while opening another. Bédier’s two journeys from France to Réunion suggest that sometimes the colony comes “before” the metropole, even in the metropole. As such,

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creole experience and creolization as a sociocultural process exemplify what Ann Laura Stoler has termed “imperial debris.” Stoler insists on the degree to which the distinctions that often structure historical analysis derive from imperial formations — ideologies and actions that never belong entirely to the past: “The ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ spaces of imperial formations may not correspond to the common geographical designations that imperial architects scripted themselves. Terms like metropole and colony, core and periphery presume to make clear what is not.”3 This apparent clarity can block perception of phenomena that do not follow the script written by the architects of empire. “Imperial debris” thus refers partly to remains made to look discarded by the discourses that sustain empire. In this perspective, the “old colonies” themselves functioned as entire societies that had to be made “peripheral” (beyond the fact of their geographical location relative to continental France) in order for France to consolidate its national imaginary. The islands’ designation by metropolitan powers in the 1950s and 1960s as imperial “confetti” underscores the durability of empire in postcolonial France: even though nineteenth-century conquests rendered the “old colonies” obsolete in the imperial economy, they eventually became almost all that “remained” of French overseas ambitions. Confetti is indeed a kind of debris difficult to control: it flutters about in the smallest breath of air, lingering in forgotten corners until some later disturbance. As a metaphor for relations between the “old colonies” and “France,” “confetti” suggests some of the complexities of imperial time and space. Devised to celebrate the imperial party, the term also points to the empire’s demise. Colonialism’s “leftovers” remain part of “France.” On Réunion—the former “second metropole” and “colonizing colony”— these debris remain deeply entangled with postcolonialism, globalization, and Europeanization. The idea of imperial debris suggests a number of layered and shifting interactions among colonialism and medievalism. It underscores the fractured constitution of the very idea of creole medievalism— an imperial formation also shaped by subversion and resistance. Creole medievalism refers alternately and sometimes simultaneously to: colonialist recuperations of the national past, opposition to the hegemonies attributed to historical legitimation, exclusionary teleologies of national belonging, open-ended engagement with the diversities of literary history, and the possibility of imagining the past in ways not predicated on the binary structures pro-

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duced by imperial ideologies. Creole medievalism—as articulated by Joseph Bédier, as an imperial formation that continues to mutate—“remains” within culture and scholarship in a number of different ways. In French medieval studies, creole medievalism suggests that imperial formations should be part of what and how literary history is studied and taught. Literary histories themselves — the very notion of such histories — emerged institutionally in France alongside empire, and remain embedded in its formations. The specific genres that attracted Bédier’s most concerted attentions —fabliaux, romance, epic — present particularly rich opportunities for the investigation of transhistorical and transcultural filiations, affinities, and estrangements. Creole medievalism focuses attention, for example, on how fabliaux invite and resist comedy on a planetary scale, on how romance interrogates the politics of blind love, and on how epics support and challenge empires. The entire structure of the editorial debates that have grappled with Bédier’s “best manuscript” method relies on dichotomies and family metaphors indebted to the same conceptual structures that sustained colonialism. Creole medievalism subsumes nation-based perspectives on philology into an imperial understanding of the nation itself. Bédier’s medievalism drew on broader republican discourses of the medieval and the colonial, all of which have left their own debris—from the infamous “Gaulish ancestors” presented to children throughout the empire to the “epic” narrative of colonial ambition. Wherever the French Middle Ages resurface in later cultural and theoretical formations, colonialism and imperialism also return. For example, the strains of medievalism that run through French philosophical thought—what Bruce Holsinger has called “theoretic medievalism”—carry within them the colonial formations of creole medievalism. Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes all came of age in Parisian academic institutions deeply affected by Bédier’s Middle Ages and epic nationalism. Their medievalism, in other words, derives partly from a Middle Ages conceived on Réunion. Theorists of a slightly younger generation, such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, drew on these same legacies, as well as on their own direct colonial formations.4 Creole medievalism highlights the vibrant codependency of colonialism and medievalism in the work of these theorists who resist so explicitly the unitary affirmations of national ideologies. In this regard, the image of Derrida routing his colonial identity through identification with

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a fourteenth-century clandestine Jew from Spain performs poignantly medievalism’s entanglements with the ethics of imperial memory.5 From the perspectives of creole medievalism, French medievalism of all kinds inevitably mobilizes imperial debris. At the most general level, creole medievalism reminds us that the Middle Ages have been drafted into a number of different roles in colonial discourse, from guaranteeing the “civilization” of Europe to imposing “barbarism” overseas. Medieval motifs also slip into colonial and postcolonial syncretisms as part of broader appropriations of European cultures, from the epic heroes of the Luso–African theater of tchiloli on the island of São Tomé (Roland, Charlemagne, and others) to much of the practice of European medieval studies outside of Europe.6 Indeed, imperial remains engage the medieval in a number of ways, from Glissant meditating on Ernst Robert Curtius’s European Latin Literature and the European Middle Ages to the rethinking of “empire” itself at the opening of the twenty-first century.7 While my specific claims for creole medievalism target French formations, France and its empires engage broader global dynamics that embed local phenomena in structures that far exceed their immediate resonance. Thus just as creole medievalism exceeds the personal limits of Bédier’s biography, its implications reach beyond both France and Réunion. Imperial debris are most visible in material forms— in what Stoler calls “imperial ruins.” Arguing against critical complacency around the “legacies” of empire and the aesthetics of ancient ruins, Stoler asks how “imperial formations persist in their material debris, in ruined landscapes and through the social ruination of people’s lives.” By focusing on the “material refuse of imperial projects,” Stoler underscores the multiple temporalities of imperial effects.8 The notion that the “leftovers” of empire continue to impinge, not necessarily continuously, on the present suggests that imperialism remains active even where it appears defeated or dormant: “To speak of colonial ruination is to trace the fragile and durable substance and signs, the visible and visceral sense in which the effects of empire are reactivated and remain.” The idea of the ruin, moreover, combines both action and artifact, suggesting how artifacts also act: “By definition ruination is an ambiguous term; both an act of ruining, a condition of being ruined, and a cause of it.”9 Stoler’s idea of the “imperial ruin” reconfigures some of the now familiar terrain that collocates colonialism, medievalism, and Bédier. In conclusion, I would like to return to a few of the sites discussed

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in earlier chapters, and consider the remains of creole medievalism from the perspective of its “ruins.” During 2003, the Musée Léon Dierx exhibited paintings acquired during the museum’s first decades. Although partly motivated by the practical necessity of repairs to the storage facility, “Ceci n’est pas une exposition” [This is not an exhibit] nonetheless raised trenchant questions about the politics of commemoration and the meanings of colonialism in the twenty-first century. The colonial-era paintings referenced many of the themes that shaped Bédier’s creole medievalism: portraits of Marius Leblond and the Kervéguens (cousins of Bédier’s, benefactors of the museum, and renowned plantation owners) referenced the racialist philosophy of aristocratic chivalry; Norman and Breton landscapes portrayed the Aryan provincial roots of which creoles like Bédier were so proud; local landscapes marked the island as an aesthetically desirable place of colonial privilege; images of Paris monuments like the Palais Bourbon and the Panthéon evoked the metropolitan prestige that structured creole society (and Bédier’s personal itinerary); two scenes inspired by Paul et Virginie echoed the use of this creole love story in idealized representations of Réunion during the Third Republic (including Bédier’s family history and the creole memories that inspired his Tristan et Iseut); paintings of and by Léon Dierx recalled the pantheon of creole poets that included Bédier; two anonymous religious paintings from the late Middle Ages maintained the museum’s founding medievalism and the deepest historical lineages claimed by “Réunionnais imperialism.” Finally, numerous portraits of unknown subjects by unknown painters materialized the romance of forgetting that Bédier identified as the basis of both medieval literature and national identity: as Bédier stated, family portraits—like medieval heroes—fall into anonymity within a few generations unless preserved in public writings. As an imperial ruin, “Ceci n’est pas une exposition” interrogates the degree to which recontextualization can transfigure colonial formations. Certainly, the exhibition title marks the curators’ commitment to the disruptive powers of reappropriation: it points toward René Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”— an image of a pipe accompanied by the written denial of the pipe’s presence. Magritte’s painting, in its various forms, demands recognition of the irresolvable simultaneity of its truth (there is no “real” pipe present) and its absurdity (a “pipe” clearly appears). Similarly, “Ceci n’est

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pas une exposition” presents both a museological truth and an absurdity: the exhibit “is not” in the sense that it denies curatorial ordering in favor of the accidental collocations of items from storage; clearly, paintings are on display. A “real” presentation of colonial origins is framed into absence (“ceci n’est pas”) while quite literally occupying the museum; the works retain their “original” significance while taking on new ones shaped by the dramatic changes that have taken place in Réunionnais society since the museum’s founding. The exhibit both returns to and denies its origins. In this impossible collocation, are viewers to admire or reject the aspirations that founded the museum and inspired the paintings? As a museological ruin, “Ceci n’est pas une exposition” cannot answer. It can only expose the uncanny and unsettling ability of colonialist and multiculturalist ideals to poke through each others’ veneers — to “ruin” each other. The Musée des Colonies that opened for the 1931 Exposition Coloniale in Paris is another institutional site initially engaged with creole medievalism that has undergone major changes in recent years. Since October 2007, the building (now named for its location, Palais de la Porte Dorée) has housed the new Cité Nationale d’Histoire de l’Immigration (CNHI). At first, the CNHI seems to prolong the building’s inscription of colonial medievalism. The official introductory film, for example, shows the medieval French “nation” already welcoming “foreigners” within its borders. Yet the CNHI formally limits its museological focus to the last two hundred years.10 It has also largely defined immigrants as “foreigners.” The original slogan of the CNHI, “Leur histoire est notre histoire” [Their history is our history] inscribed indelible difference as the basis of national harmony. This approach assumed and required that “immigrants” have histories different from “ours.”11 These terms of national belonging remain largely the same as those of colonial republicanism: peoples belong to their “countries of origin,” and a society born entirely of migration (like Réunion’s) lacks “authentic” indigeneity. In this frame, there is little conceptual space for the “citizen immigrant” from overseas. The CNHI’s goal, moreover, of promoting integration and social cohesion sounds, from an overseas perspective, very much like a neocolonialist discourse of assimilation. The CNHI is part of a much larger reorganization of museums undertaken by French governments over the last ten years. These changes include the opening of a new museum of “non-Western arts,” Musée du Quai Branly (MQB), drawing on collections formerly housed in the Palais

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de la Porte Dorée (Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, MAAO) and the Musée de l’Homme. An already substantial body of commentary has shown the various ways in which the MQB perpetuates colonial formations.12 However vibrantly contemporary the museum’s architecture, its foundation rests on imperial ruins. Like the CNHI, the MQB touts multicultural harmony. This goal is captured pithily in its slogan, “Là où dialoguent les cultures” [Where cultures dialogue] and in the 2008–9 exhibits “Planète métisse: To Mix or Not To Mix” and “Paris, ville métisse” (for a fee, patrons could take a guided tour of Chinatown in the 13th Arrondissement—Quartier Bédier!). The MQB’s recuperation of métissage brings it to the heart of “French” identity (juxtaposing provincial and tribal costumes) while also pushing it to the peripheral edge of “otherness” (one can choose “not to mix”; the “French” don’t visit Chinatown without a guide). The MQB, like the CNHI, limits itself to the historical contours of modern imperialism (although with a slightly longer view covering the past five centuries).13 And yet the global Middle Ages subtly frame the museum’s authenticity: when the museum opened, the entrance to the permanent collection was marked by the same African royal statue that once stood at the entrance to the Musée de l’Homme14 — a figure that dates to the same period as Roland (tenth–eleventh century). The MQB reaches even further into history with its official icon (purchased specifically for the new museum), a statue from Mexico created several centuries before the birth of Christ.15 These two prominent “ancient” objects subtly position the MQB outside of French imperial time (a viewpoint underscored by the relative absence of colonial history in the permanent displays). Meanwhile, the façade of the Palais de la Porte Dorée remains intact, preserving the imperial dimensions of creole medievalism sculpted there for 1931 (French ports guarded by medieval castles, modern colonialists inscribed in the lineage of medieval crusaders, Réunion represented in a small corner beneath Madagascar). These structures enjoy the protection of the French state; they may not be “ruined” without damage to the national patrimoine. At both the CNHI and the MQB, “preservation” conjures a number of conflicting relations with the legacies of empire. The MQB relies on the same national definitions of citizenship as the CNHI: its mission recognizes responsibilities toward objects’ “countries of origin,” a concept that presumes that artifacts (like immigrants) have clearly defined identities as citizens of foreign nation-states (and that those

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states exert legitimate control over all artifacts ever produced within their current borders). This approach overlooks the heterogeneity of cultural and artistic production, while locating the “non-Western” securely “elsewhere.” Once again, then, Europeans from outside of Europe —and Europe before the nation-state — slip from view. Tellingly, in July 2008, the staff of neither the MQB nor the CNHI could locate photos from the Musée des Colonies that document traces of both the Middle Ages and Réunion in the museological history of empire — retrospective galleries of the Middle Ages and “Paul et Virginie.”16 Reconfigurations of the European Middle Ages will visibly accompany the installation of a third institution projected to join the CNHI and the MQB, the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. The MUCEM interrogates the origins and ongoing formations of “civilization” across the Mediterranean as part of a project devoted to discovering new foundations of crosscultural unity (the original acronym was PACEM).17 Scheduled to open fully in 2013 in Marseille, the MUCEM replaces the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires (MNATP) in Paris, which closed in 2005. While the MNATP exhibited essentially an ethnography of continental France and traditional agriculture, the MUCEM places French traditions in a larger geographic context. The museum’s commitment to geographic proximities, however, excludes overseas France from the “European” patrimony. This exclusion is a particularly trenchant irony since places like Réunion are officially designated “ultra-peripheral” regions of the European Union (they must follow EU regulations, however ill suited to local conditions). Once again, colonial history occupies the “blind spot” of France’s national museums.18 While the MUCEM claims a limited geographical purview, its historical reach extends to the ninth century (and potentially much further).19 Fittingly, the exhibit that marked the transformation of the MNATP into the MUCEM addressed the European tradition of epic heroism. Presented in Paris in 2004, in Marseille in 2005, and envisioned as a permanent exhibit for the MUCEM, “At the Frontiers of Heroism, the Acrites in Europe” defines epic heroes as acrites or border figures—champions of intercultural understanding and avatars of values shared by all European cultures. The acrites project, largely underwritten by the European Commission, drafts medieval literature into the project of integrating the members of the EU into a harmonious cultural as well as economic unit:

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The ambition of ACRINET is to demonstrate to the general European public the virtues of peaceful coexistence in a multicultural environment, as well as to emphasise the continuing legacy of the themes to be found in acritic songs and texts. . . . ACRINET seeks to identify and establish the common elements of a European identity, which is so vital to the process of European integration.20 In this view, heroic poetry abolishes temporal and spatial boundaries; Roland offers lessons in “peaceful coexistence” for all nations. ACRINET casts the nationalist recuperation of epics during the nineteenth century as nothing more than a curious episode in their long history, one with no lasting repercussions. Crusading histories vanish as Europe “repudiates histories of violence.”21 Moving in the opposite direction of those who have insisted on Roland’s inexorable dichotomies, this utopian affirmation of commonalities does no more justice to the complexities of epic discourse. The redeployment of the epic as a site of pan-European harmony unmoors Roland from the national rivalries that informed so much of its modern history, while also deforming the dissonant cultural traces that surround the poem. Reappropriated at the nascent MUCEM, Roland continues its already long life as another kind of “imperial ruin.” The epic inhabits many different places at once, from the Carolingian empire to the Capetian monarchy to the England of the Plantagenêts through to the restored French monarchy of the 1830s, the Third Republic, and ever diversifying places and readers ever since. It portrays the transhistorical and transcultural ruins of several empires; it has shaped the discourse of ruins for several others. Cast as a material ruin—a particular manuscript that is not entirely legible and that has spawned numerous rewritings, editions, and translations — it brings together the concerted efforts to give it a single origin with the many possibilities for multiplying its sources. Its very “ruined,” incomplete state keeps it available for renewed power grabs while also enabling their undoing, their ruination. Finally, it is only fitting to return to Saint-Paul, the site of Réunion’s first settlements. There, the Maison des Civilisations et de l’Unité Réunionnaise (MCUR)has been planned under the auspices of the regional government, led by Paul Vergès until March 2010.22 The MCUR proposes to represent the diverse forms of creolization that have shaped Réunionnais

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society while promoting a sense of cultural unity for the future (a project of integration not so different in some ways from the CNHI and MUCEM). A “museum of the present,” the MCUR project defends local culture in all its variety and idiosyncratic detail. The migrant origins of this culture mean that the MCUR also looks to history for the sources of the “six worlds” whose mutual creolization form the basis of Réunionnais “solidarity” (African, Chinese, European, Hindu, Muslim, and the other islands of the Indian Ocean). The recursive dynamics of creolization implicate the entirety of civilizational history from Africa through Europe to India and China. These fundamental facts of migration, slavery, and indenture shape a museological project dedicated to the interrogation of imperial ruins. The original MCUR has itself become an imperial ruin —cancelled by the new regional government in April 2010, accused of creating too much “divisive” memory, cast as an obstacle to economic opportunity for citizens who live daily with the ruins of imperialism. Within the contours of creole medievalism, literary history provides an additional transhistorical vector. Notably, the excavation of “Réunionnais unity” around the MCUR project has included references to figures intimately tied to Bédier’s creole identifications: Axel Gauvin has explicated the “creolizations” of Parny and Leconte de Lisle (the national poets drafted to legitimate Bédier’s own identity as a creole writer), while Carpanin Marimoutou has argued that contemporary maloya inhabits a world partly conditioned by the poetics of the Leblonds.23 These references, from the perspective of creole medievalism, forge connections between postcolonial Réunionnité and the legacies of the Third Republic’s creole diaspora—including Bédier. Through literary history, Bédier’s own “creolizations” rejoin institutional identity politics in the twenty-first century, embedding medieval histories in the deep formations of Réunionnais society. Meanwhile, at the shoreline in Saint-Paul, signs of empire and its ruinations abound. They include the grave of Leconte de Lisle, a slave cemetery, a monument to métissage, and some bare concrete walls that once bore the name “Joseph Bédier.” The paths of creole medievalism led me to disinter this literal signature of colonial Francocentrism from Réunion’s archives — and to “restore” the ruin, at least for those who read this book (and especially for those who know Saint-Paul). What are the ethics of such a restoration? Are some things better lost, blankness a more appropriate memorial to the neocolonial interventions of the 1960s and to the earlier imperialisms that made them possible?

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Perhaps the wall is more ruined when accompanied by the ghostly memory of its lost letters. The monument, “ruined” by the letters’ removal (or by their inability to withstand the elements), testifies to the fragility of imperial certainties. The stairs in front lead, bleakly, to the prospect of reconciled futures, largely unnoticed on the backside of the market. Similarly, creole medievalism—a restoration project and a ruin — exemplifies the ways in which origins derive from reconstructions that translate desires to forget. In the present, we are, whoever we are, always “coming from the Middle Ages” like the Réunionnais migrant cited at the beginning of this book — that is to say, we are tied to the remnants of the origins of our own imagination.

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Notes

All translations from French are my own. In the case of published materials with wide availability, the French text is usually not included. Archival Abbreviations

AAF ADR AHC ANF BAR BHP BIF BNF BVC CFB

Archives de l’Académie Française, Paris Archives départementales de La Réunion, Sainte-Clothilde, La Réunion Archives d’histoire contemporaine, Paris Archives nationales de France, Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Bibliothèque Victor Cousin, La Sorbonne, Paris (MS. 263) Collège de France, Paris (Fonds Bédier, now housed at the Institut Mémoires de l’edition contemporaine, Abbaye d’Ardenne, St-Germain la Blanche Herbe) DAS Département des Arts du spectacle, BNF MLD Musée Léon Dierx, Saint-Denis, La Réunion NAF Nouvelles acquisitions françaises, Département des Manuscrits, BNF WML Wolfsonian Museum and Library, Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida Introduction

  1. Interview published in Tal 112–18 (citation at 114).   2. Fabian.   3. “Je ne suis pas un homme d’aujourd’hui, mais du moyen âge; je retarde de six siècles au moins. Je viens vers vous d’une France très lointaine, celle de St. Louis” (draft of speech to be given in Berkeley, California [1927?]) (CFB, liasse 104bis).   4. Stoler and McGranahan 8. · 235 ·

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  5. Stoler and Cooper; Cooper; Stoler, Race 198–99; Wilder; Bancel and Blanchard, “Les origines” 42 (“the national territory is colonized by the Empire”).   6. Bancel and Blanchard, “Les origines” 34; also Girardet, Mythes 160.   7. “J’appartiens . . . à une de ces Frances d’outre mer qui, les unes sous le drapeau tricolore, d’autres sous le drapeau d’un peuple ami, contribuent à la grandeur de la France une et indivisible” (speech given in San Francisco) (CFB, liasse 106, p. 2).   8. Olivier, Exposition 5.2:999; Mariol 108.   9. Pirotin 123–28. Even in the mid-twentieth century, Réunion could be judged “ideological” (Marius Leblond, Les grandes heures 207).  10. Article by Candide Azéma, acting mayor of Saint-Denis in 1848 (Azéma 102–6).  11. Eve, De La Réunion coloniale, Les sept dernières années; Binoche; Martinez, vol. 1; Médéa; Robert; Cercle Éliard Laude; Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 123–84; Vergès, La loi (on how “assimilation” motivated both colonialist and anticolonialist efforts); Le mémorial 7:430–41, 458–83. On the most recent legislative changes, which vigorously affirm the status quo, see Diémert, Isar, and Roux.  12. Examples in Beniamino, “De l’interprétation”; Bertile et al.; Combeau, Eve, et al.; Fuma, Histoire; Gailland; Jablonka; Tal; Albert Weber.  13. Examples in Chaudenson, “Le cas des créoles,” “Mulâtres, métis, créoles”; Beniamino, Le français de La Réunion; Bongie, “‘Of Whatever Color;’” Vaughan (on Mauritius); D. Picard 303–4.  14. “Créole,” Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française; “Créole,” Trésor de la langue française; Garraway 17–20.  15. Baudelaire 45; “Joseph Bédier,” Petit Marseillais; Artus.  16. E.g., Buet 18, 54, 75–76.  17. Chaudenson, “Le cas des créoles” 68; Leal 252–53; Henrique 40, 56; Livre d’or (1931) 137; Martial 30 (cited in Ezra 42).  18. Examples in Beniamino, “Politique”; Encyclopédie 7:106–10, 118–21; Marimoutou, “Créolie,” “Écrire métis”; Vergès, “The Island of Wandering Souls”; Vergès and Marimoutou, Amarres; Enwezor et al.  19. “Au début créole signifie exclusivement le Blanc né aux Colonies de souche européenne, une aristocratie que ce mot distingue des sangs-mêlés. A partir de 1871 et du Suffrage Universel ceux-ci — qui descendent des esclaves ou des anciens immigrés—se battant la poitrine avec sonorité, se proclament créoles de couleurs pour se mettre au-dessus des immigrants frais arrivés et s’assurer des privilèges croissants” (Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 157). Except where otherwise noted, all citations of the Leblonds refer to their joint publications signed “Marius-Ary.”  20. “Créole de sang, Leconte de Lisle est encore créole par le temps qu’il passa dans son pays” (Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 319).

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 21. “Vous l’entendrez lancer en riant des mots de patois qui sont . . . comme les signes d’un blason de noblesse créole” (Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 115–16).  22. The “Cellamare” conspiracy, led by the Duchess of Maine, would have placed the king of Spain on the French throne. Marius Leblond repeats the Bédier family legend in 1946 (Les îles sœurs 210).  23. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 118; Adolphe Bédier 53 (Barassin offers a rather different history of sugar industrialization).  24. Lobligeois 4, 27–42, 62n147, 96–125; Le mémorial 3:398–99, 4:447–49; Brunet 160–63; Leguen 157–63, 182–83.  25. Lobligeois 47–62, 107–17; Caudron 8, 24–25, 30; Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 58–66; Adolphe Bédier 86 (on Bédier landholdings around SainteSuzanne); Eve, Un quartier 121–22, 131, 139, 141–45, 168).  26. Réunionnais memorialists, intent on bolstering Bédier’s native character, characterize this extra-insular birth as an “accident” that occurred during a brief trip: Roda, “Joseph Bédier” 62 (repeated in Dictionnaire biographique 1:19 and La Réunion des grands hommes).  27. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 118–19 (the family arrived in May; the FrancoPrussian war began in July). I follow Bédier’s usage in referring to his stepfather as “Du Tertre” rather than as “Le Cocq” (as often appears in the press).  28. Leblond, L’île enchantée 138–39.  29. Leal 10, 135.  30. Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 19, 62; Mille, Barnavaux 175.  31. Letter dated January 1773 (Œuvres choisies 469–72).  32. Fidus 343; Adolphe Bédier 36.  33. E.g., “Mon premier amour en prose” (1840), “Sacatove” (1846), “Marcie” (1847) (in Leconte de Lisle, Contes); “Un Souvenir et un regret” (1839), “Aux montagnes natales” (1839), “Une pensée” (in Premières poesies, 71–72, 93–95, 232–34), “Le départ” (1845). Collections of the Réunionnais poems in: Issop-Banian; Sham’s; Lougnon, Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle.  34. On the abolition of slavery: Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 178–81; Houssaye 12–15; Sham’s 212–13; Foucque, “Leconte de Lisle” 42–44; Putter, La dernière illusion 45–46. On French colonialism in India: Leconte de Lisle, Inde française (1857); Flottes 141–43.  35. Comparison to Hugo: Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 217–83. Leconte de Lisle complained bitterly when republicans criticized him for accepting an imperial stipend in 1864 (letter to François Foucque, 3 October 1870, printed in Issop-Banian 118). Barrès’s admiration: Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 249–50, 286a, 309; Lebovics, True France 19; Barrès spoke at the inauguration of the Leconte de Lisle statue in the Luxembourg Gardens (Amori 5, 251–59), and remembered him fondly in his acceptance speech at the Académie (Discours 19).

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 36. Leconte de Lisle, Discours 3–4; De Mulder; Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 210–13, 248–51; Dakyns 145–60, Ridoux 98–99.  37. Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 338–40; Vianey 68–69.  38. Baudelaire 45; Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 263, 315–54; Fondanaux; Sham’s 31.  39. Noulet 43.  40. Prince of Poets: ibid. 25–26. Superiority over other poets: cited in Boyer 8.  41. Boyer 8.  42. Parny in Barquissau, “Lettres familières” 574–75, Chevaliers 93–94.  43. Seeking appointment: letter to the Minister of Public Instruction, July 1848 (printed in Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 198; Charavay 231–32). Considering election: Letter to Emilie Foucque dated 19 March 1882, summarizing discussion with De Mahy (Bédier’s cousin) (Putter, “Leconte de Lisle” 260–61; Issop-Banian 121–22). In 1848, De Mahy had attended the meeting organized by Leconte de Lisle in favor of abolition, but had not signed the petition (Houssaye 12–13). According to Binoche (56–59), both were members of the “Franc-Créoles,” a secret, antiaristocratic group fiercely devoted to insular patriotism and autonomy (Caudron). Leconte de Lisle claimed the Cuban-born poet José-Maria de Heredia as a “compatriot,” and reportedly enjoyed joking with him about their colonial homelands (Barrès, Discours 25; Leconte de Lisle, Lettres 25, 121).  44. Praise and criticism: Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 361–64; Foucque, “Leconte de Lisle”; Pich, “Leconte de Lisle” 48–52. Private thanks: Foucque, “Leconte de Lisle” 39–45; Leconte de Lisle, Discours; letter to M. Crestien dated 6 April 1886, letter to a “compatriote” dated 27 July 1886 (printed in Issop-Banian 119–20); further letters discussing creole reactions to the Académie election in Putter, La dernière illusion. Obituaries: Foucque, “Leconte de Lisle” 49–51; Eve, “Du républicain socialiste maudit au poète récupéré” 39–43.  45. On returning: letter from mother to brother Arthur, anticipating his arrival after eighteen years of absence, 12 August 1878 (printed in Boyer 64, Noulet 24). 1892 remarks: cited in Boyer 8.  46. Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 8; also Congrès (1931), 6–7.  47. Ary Leblond, “Le bicentennaire”; similar comment in Barquissau, Chevaliers 61–94; Foucque, “Apport” 102–6; Sam-Long, De l’élégie 45–57.  48. Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 8, 56–57.  49. ANF, F21/4885/dossier 13 (supporters include Barrès, Jules Lemaître, and Sully Prudhomme); Beniamino, “Leconte de Lisle.”  50. The Académie de La Réunion devoted an entire Bulletin to Dierx in 1938 on the hundredth anniversary of his birth; Boyer’s 1988 book marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary.  51. E.g., Caudron 396.  52. Leblonds, La Réunion et Paris 5, 6 (also J. G. Francsesme, “Nos Créoles,”

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La dépêche de La Réunion, 19 July 1911, p. 2, transcribed in Ah-Koon and Duchêne 2:65); Barquissau, “Joseph Bédier” 45, 48; Lycée de Saint-Denis (1921) 24, (1922) 28.  53. Leblond, “Introduction” 7; Foucque, “Apport.”  54. E.g., Leblond, L’île enchantée 137–42, 150.  55. “Joseph Bédier est mort!”; also Pirotin, “one of the elites who have honored the whole nation” (171–73).  56. E.g., Trautmann; Joseph; Egonu; Berliner 71–106; Edwards 69–98; Onana 63–112. Maran later reproached Marius Leblond for patriotic “bad faith” in attacking Batouala but supporting the Nazis (cited in Onana 172).  57. Schultz.  58. Leblond, Après l’exotisme 7–12, 32, 44, 59–63; Hubec in Congrès 87; Olivier, Exposition 5.2:265; Cheval, “Souvenirs” 48; Nicole 225–76; Bongie, Exotic Memories 112–16. Pierre Mille gave a similarly Eurocentric definition of the colonial writer in 1909 (Barnavaux 173–75). Interestingly, Maran himself defined “French African Literature” in these same Eurocentric terms in the 1920s (Edwards 78).  59. Olivier, Exposition 4:171, 296; Congrès 81–87.  60. La Grande France (1900–3); Leblond, Zézère (1903), vii–viii; Anthologie coloniale: Pour faire aimer nos colonies (1906); La Réunion et Paris (1911). In La Grande France, the Leblonds published Auguste Brunet (Réunionnais), Pierre Mille, Marcel Proust, Apollinaire, and Francis Jammes, among others. Their Algerian novels (M.-A. Leblond, Secret des robes [1904] and L’oued [1907]) also contributed to the colonialist aesthetic promoted by Robert Randau (Randau; Dejeux).  61. Bédier founded the Revue with his cousin Marcel Prévost and the journalist Raymond Recouly (whom he had met during the war). It resembled the Leblonds’ Grande France, with a range of political, literary, and cultural writings, conceived as nationalist intellectual propaganda (“Aux lecteurs” vol 1.1 and 1.2).  62. Bédier, “L’esprit,” “Quelques scènes,” La chanson de Roland (1922). Except where noted otherwise, “Roland” refers to the narrative preserved in Digby MS 23 (Bodleian Library, Oxford University), commonly known as the “Oxford Roland” and edited many times.  63. Contributors include the Leblonds, Jean D’Esme, Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras, Raymond Poincaré, Ernest Renan (posthumously) . . . and the grandniece of Baudelaire’s “Dame Créole” (Rosenmark); Bédier was also in contact with Pierre Mille in this period (Corbellari, Correspondance no. 268). Cf. Longnon on modernizations of medieval literature.  64. Bédier, Études critiques; Mille, Barnavaux 174.  65. Cazemage, “La vie et l’œuvre” 112.  66. Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 355.  67. Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 5, “La poésie” 821.

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 68. Lebel, Le livre du pays noir, Histoire de la littérature coloniale en France, Les établissments français d’outre-mer.  69. Wittman.  70. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 117; also Roda, “Place de l’Île de la Réunion” 143, 149–50. Mentions of Bédier in tourist promotion materials a decade earlier: Foucque in Les richessses de la France: revue de tourisme, de l’économie et des arts 25 (1956): 48.  71. Le journal de l’île de la Réunion (16 June 1964).  72. Foucque, ed., Les poètes de l’île Bourbon 8.  73. De Rauville.  74. “Joseph Bédier était capable de lire trois discours . . . dans un silence absolu. On aurait entendu une mouche voler. Parce qu’il écrivait en vers, dans une langue magnifique. C’était inoubliable” (in Bertile et al. 291). Bédier’s poetic prowess is still cited in the press (e.g., Vittori).  75. Collection of letters, press reports, and speeches related to the transfer in Lougnon, Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle; Sham’s 89–93. The following year, the Archives départmentales de La Réunion published an Hommage de La Réunion à Leconte de Lisle in its Bulletin d’information (3e série, no. 2, May 1978).  76. Barre used the occasion to support greater integration and to request patience with economic development (Lougnon, Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle 165). On Barre’s relations with Réunion (critical of both left and right), Le mémorial 7:404–11.  77. Facsimile of contract in Le mémorial 7:388; interview published in Lougnon, Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle 198. Indeed, in 1975, activists in the four DOM had reached an agreement to work together toward autonomy (coverage in Témoignages); tellingly, Lougnon includes no press reports from this communist newspaper (Safla 194).  78. Le mémorial 7:389–95; Lougnon, Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle 169–70, 189–92.  79. Sham’s 35, 63, 84; Pitchaya (published by Sham’s); Leconte de Lisle, l’esprit nomade (Grand Océan no. 6, 1995); Lougnon, Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle 193; Cornu, Paris et Bourbon 41.  80. Lecherbonnier; the same Bulletin celebrates Leconte de Lisle and the Leblonds.  81. “L’auteur se montre respectueux de la culture de l’autre et, le premier, ouvre la voie à une lignée d’écrivains réunionnais, de Leconte de Lisle à Gamaleya, qui ont été les chantres de la Liberté” (Gauvin and Gauvain, trans., book jacket).  82. Gilles Gauvin, Michel Debré (1996), 83–92, (2006), 207–12; Robert 119–22; Rousse 3:23–104. On Gamaleya’s poetry, Beniamino, La légende, “Politique.” Gamaleya was one of thirteen Réunionnais forcibly transferred to the metropole under an ordinance designed by the Prime Minister Michel Debré (15 October 1960): it autho-

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rized local prefects to transfer to the metropole, without appeal, any overseas public employees they considered dangerous to “public order” (the government feared the spread of independence movements from Algeria to other departments). Gamaleya returned to Réunion shortly after the abrogation of Debré’s ordinance in 1972.  83. Gamaleya contributed to the Russian translation of Parny (“Une œuvre”; “La poésie”), and edited two of Leconte de Lisle’s short stories in autonomist periodicals in the 1960s and 70s (“Sacatove,” “Mon premier amour en prose”; Safla 194–95).  84. Nout Lang: Magazine pou met an ord la lang kréol Larénion 2 (2000): 7; Gauvin on the magazine in Gauthier.  85. On the civilizing mission, Conklin.  86. Dakyns 74–75; Effros, “Anthropology and Ancestry”; Leprun 121–23. Bédier revealed his absorption of republican “raciology” (Reynaud-Paligot) when he asked his colleague Mario Roques for information to complete an “anthropometric record” (BIF, MS 6142, f. 223).  87. Gossman, Between 272–74, 282–84.  88. Ganim has posited similar convergences at London expositions (83–107). 1. Roncevaux and Réunion

  1. Geary, The Myth of Nations 15–40. Rome of course remained instrumental, notably in French efforts to “Latinize” Algeria (Lorcin).   2. E.g., Nichols, “Poetic Reality” 23–24, “Modernism”; Benton 237–38; Gumbrecht; Duggan, “Franco-German”; Bloch, “Mieux vaut jamais que tard” 64–69, “New Philology” 38–46, “Naturalism”; Taylor 34–35; Kinoshita, “‘Pagans are wrong’ ” 80–81; Gaunt; Ridoux 61–64; Emery, “The ‘Truth’ About the Middle Ages”; on French and English rivalries, Bloch, Needle.   3. Bernard-Griffiths et al.; Dakyns; Glencross; Gossman, Medievalism; Redman.   4. Nora, “L’‘Histoire de France’ de Lavisse” 861.   5. Chafer and Sackur 5; illustrated in art by the valorization of medieval “primitifs” as authentic sources of national identity (Morowitz).   6. Saint-Victor 6, 15, 17, 26–27, 53, 132, 221–26; examples from poetry cited in Dakyns 200–1 (including Leconte de Lisle and Victor Hugo); Digeon mentions similar reactions from Renan, Taine, and Flaubert (96) (Taine had judged the German character “primitive” already in 1858, 2:173–78); further examples in Jeismann 151–211.   7. Digeon 326; Leroux. During the war of 1914–18, Bédier took satisfaction in quoting a German soldier admitting that his people were “barbarians” (“Les crimes” 606, reprinted in Comment l’Allemagne).   8. Bédier, Les crimes allemands 38. Bédier dedicated his Commentaires on Roland (1927) to his former student Jean Acher, who was killed in the war. Luigi

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Foscolo Benedetto characterizes Bédier’s entire philological theory as part of a right-wing “campagna germanofoba” that impaired his critical vision (64–66).   9. Digeon 80–83.  10. Flaubert, Correspondance VI, 259, 28 (cited in Digeon 167); Saint-Victor 244.  11. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen 5 (citing Gambetta 2:22).  12. Mérignhac 369.  13. Hedo-Vivier 84, 116–18; similar interventions by Victor Schoelcher (representing Martinique) (Polémique coloniale 1:39–64, 2:186).  14. Hedo-Vivier 115; Binoche 31–71 (citation at 45: “La République ne se serait pas faite”).  15. Hedo-Vivier 115; Binoche 31–71; Combeau, ed., La Réunion sous la Troisième République.  16. M. Raboisson, Étude sur les colonies et la colonisation au regard de la France (1877) (cited in Girardet, Le nationalisme français 89).  17. M. Bechelem in Lycée de Saint-Denis (1923) 9.  18. E.g., Barrès, Scènes et doctrines 303, 308; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 20– 21; Ford; Gerson; Lebovics, True France; Thiesse; Turetti.  19. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen 3–22, 485–96, 568n8; Williams 108–9; Colonna 64–69; Morand, 1900 90; Corbin (on a notorious case of provincial “cannibals”).  20. Dias, Musée 175–94; Peer 136–37.  21. E.g., Hargreaves 118–19 (on Pierre Mille’s provincial colonialism); Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:268.  22. Cited in Maran 12; further examples in Craig 217, 238, 290.  23. Morton, Hybrid Modernities 131–74.  24. E.g., “Causerie du Franc-Colon,” Le Salazien et Moniteur (4 October 1887). A similar temporal mapping casts Réunion’s own interior into the “past” (Picard, “‘Being a Model for the World’ ” 311).  25. Ganiage 165–69; Grupp; Lagana; Persell.  26. Morand, “Rien que la terre” 333.  27. Brunschwig 177–84; Digeon 432–33, 448–50; Angenot 213–59; Cooke; Girardet, L’idée coloniale 43–93; Bancel and Blanchard; Bancel, Blanchard, and Vergès; Wilder; Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 87–90, 142–43, 166; Schivelbusch on the “culture of defeat.”  28. De Mahy, Discours; Hedo-Vivier 92–93, 113, 130.  29. Hedo-Vivier 110, 115–18.  30. Gagneur, “La doctrine coloniale” 59–61, 74–104; Daughton 173–74, 185– 86, 195.  31. Barquissau, Une colonie colonisatrice (with essays lauding both De Mahy and Bédier); Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 216, 219, 227, La paix 56–57.  32. Hedo-Vivier 140, 149; arguments later continued by the Leblonds (e.g., “Île de la Réunion” 7).

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 33. Cited in Binoche 324.  34. De Mahy, Autour de l’île Bourbon; Brunet, La France à Madagascar; Lobligeois 27–42, 96–99, 142; Gagneur, “Louis Brunet” 140–50. Bédier reviewed De Mahy’s book in La revue des deux mondes (15 September 1891, third cover page) (authorship confirmed in letter to Brunetière, 1 September 1891, BNF, NAF MS 25030, f. 277v).  35. De Mahy, “Un peu de politique.”  36. Hedo-Vivier 154–75; Ageron, France coloniale 113–29; Ganiage 184–97; Binoche 316–43.  37. “Réunionnais imperialism”: Ganiage 37, 348; evidence of Réunionnais success in Ageron, France coloniale 119–28. Gabriel Hanotaux, a trained medievalist and Bédier’s future colleague at the Académie Française, often served as their spokesman and collaborator (Leguen 158; Les corps de notre marine). Conquest of Madagascar: Leblond, “La Réunion et son Musée”; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 221–22; portrait of De Mahy identifying him as the one who “convinced France to annex Madagascar” (ADR 7J17). Réunionnais long sought recognition for these efforts, e.g., Livre d’or (1931) 138; Leblond, Madagascar.  38. Hedo-Vivier 110–12, 125, 194–97; Binoche 175, 185–86, 201–2, 207, 422–23.  39. Hedo-Vivier 177–79; Ageron, France coloniale 115; Chazelet 107–12; Gagneur, “Louis Brunet” 170–71. Some even proposed exchanging Madagascar for Alsace-Lorraine (Grupp 79–80), a proposal completely at odds with Réunionnais ambitions. In 1911, Réunionnais creoles feared that the French government would move their venerable lycée to Madagascar (Leblond, La Réunion et Paris 9).  40. “En mémoire de tout ce que Bourbon a fait à Madagascar pour Madagascar. Madagascar alors pays ingrat” (undated note, CFB, liasse 112).  41. Hedo-Vivier 124.  42. Leroy-Beaulieu 409, 410; Cottias on the systematic marginalization of the “old colonies” in republican discourse.  43. Jourdain (1936); Schmokel (1964); Smith (1978); Knoll and Gann (1987); Henderson (1993); Metzger (2002).  44. Mayeur, Les débuts 131; Digeon 452–53; Gall 653–64. Contemporary French accounts of German colonialism include Lair (1902) and Tonnelat (1908).  45. Poidevin and Bariéty 170–77; Cooke 118–36; Ganiage 243–73.  46. Poidevin and Bariéty 177–90; Barlow (1940); Allain, Agadir 1911 (1976); Barraclough (1982).  47. Baldy (1912); Ducrocq (1913); Poidevin and Bariéty 109–13, 197–201; Ozouf, L’école de la France 226–27; Joly on the relative minority of dedicated revanchards.  48. Poidevin and Bariéty 191–94.  49. Letter to the Marquise, 8 September 1911 (BVC, ff. 103–5v). The Leblonds also wrote of Germany’s increasing threats to France (“Revue de la semaine,” La vie, 25 Feb 1911; La Réunion et Paris 14–16; Curriculum [ANF, 355 AP/55, Fonds Madelin, Dossier Leblond]). Bédier felt that his first military assignment in an

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infirmary lacked in “danger” (letter to the Marquise, 29 September 1914) (BVC, f. 132); he wrote to his student Jean Acher that “only bullets count” (8 November 1914) (CFB, liasse 120).  50. Gossman Between 263; Beaunier 300.  51. Sarcey, Le siège de Paris 302; Leconte de Lisle, Le sacre de Paris.  52. Thomassy (reviewing Francisque Michel’s 1837 edition of Roland).  53. Eve, La première guerre 39, 53–67.  54. Déroulède, Discours prononcé à Champigny-la-Bataille, 3 December 1908 (cited in Girardet, Le nationalisme français 226).  55. Mauduit-Bédier 10.  56. Letters to the Marquise, 29 October 1905; 8 September 1908; 8 September 1911; 17 October 1912; 16 October 1913 (BVC, ff. 33, 63r–63v, 103–5, 118).  57. Letter to the Marquise, 8 September 1911 (BVC, ff. 103–5v). In this same period, the Leblonds also wrote of France’s endangerment (“Revue de la semaine,” La vie, 25 Feb 1911; La Réunion et Paris 14–16; Curriculum (ANF, 355 AP/55, Fonds Madelin, Dossier Leblond).  58. Leguen 189.  59. Townsend 56–57, citing Ernst von Weber in the National Zeitung (20 September 1870); Metzger 228–39; Lakowski 379–90.  60. Leblond, L’Île de la Réunion 3–4.  61. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 424–28; Adrien Jacob de Cordemoy 35.  62. E.g., Girardet, L’idée coloniale 118–20; Andrew and Kanya-Forstner 55–163; Le mémorial 5:119.  63. “Roland! prénom de destinée glorieuse, qui a fondé, élevé, fortifié sa remarquable lignée dans les tranchées du Moyen-Age, à Roncevaux, pour éclairer notre vingtième siècle d’un puissant rayon de ‘gloire aérienne’” (“L’épopée de Roland Garros,” Le peuple 1915) (cited in Le mémorial 5:58–77).  64. Le mémorial 5:47–48; white Réunionnais often served as officers in units of African soldiers (e.g., Hippolyte Foucque in Lycée de Saint-Denis [1920] 29).  65. Girard; Girardet, “L’apothéose” 1088–89. Ironically, the rhetoric of crusade made Christianity central to the imperial designs of secular republicanism (Daughton).  66. Monod, De la possibilité; Lavisse; Digeon 274, 539–40; Nora, “L’‘Histoire de France’ de Lavisse,” “Lavisse, instituteur national.”  67. Prospectus for Romania (published in Bähler 699–702); Monod, Revue historique 1 (1876): 4; Digeon 103–12, 364–83; Compagnon 29–35, 108–9; Ridoux 64–73, 124–31, 141–43, 197–281, 286–98, 349–57, 410–25, 556–58. Literary history developed along similar lines under Gustave Lanson’s influence (cf. Fayolle; Meijer; Van Montfrans).  68. Wilmotte (1917); Ridoux 143–61; Leerssen, “Literary Historicism” 235–37; Himmelsbach.

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 69. “Les Français n’ont pas la tête épique” (cited by Voltaire 537, 542).  70. Quinet 27.  71. Quinet (1831); Vitet, “Chanson de Roland” (1852); Autié (1867); Leerssen, “Primitive Orality.”  72. The three-stanza “Chanson de Roland” evokes the moment of Roland’s first encounter with his enemy and includes the refrain: “Soldats français, chantez Roland, l’honneur de la chevalerie, soldats français, chantez Roland, l’honneur de la chevalerie, et répétez en combattant ces mots sacrés: gloire et patrie, gloire et patrie” (followed by “La Marseillaise,” whose author, Rouget de Lisle, had also written a Roland song, “Roland à Roncevaux”).  73. Lenient, “La poésie patriotique en France” (revised and extended in La poésie patriotique); Paris, “La Chanson de Roland et la nationalité française”; Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme.”  74. Dakyns 195–201; Bähler, “Entre science, patrie et foi,” Gaston Paris 434–50; Duggan, “Franco-German” 99–102; Emery, “The ‘Truth’ about the Middle Ages” 105–7; Ridoux 72–73. Gautier himself noted how the “disasters” of 1870 catapulted Roland to the center stage of patriotism, “une manifestation contre les vainqueurs” (Épopées françaises, 2nd ed., 2:791).  75. “Ce qui constitue la patrie, et avec elle la nationalité, c’est la communauté des idées, d’intérêts et d’affections, le libre accord des volontés et la fraternité des âmes” (Lenient, “La poésie patriotique” 36).  76. “Demandez au soldat qui emporte au delà des mers la patrie dans les plis de son drapeau. Demandez à ces colons de la Louisiane et du Canada, dont les petits-fils se souviennent encore, après deux siècles, qu’ils sont Français” (ibid.). Bédier, decades later, makes the same point about Canadians’ “faithfulness” to the mere-patrie (“Préface,” L’éducation poétique).  77. Creoles later embraced a similar emotional definition of patriotism, dismissing the importance of geographical borders in order to bring Réunion conceptually closer to France (“Marius-Ary Leblond,” L’Action de l’île de la Réunion [28 October 1911]: 1, cited in Ah-Koon and Duchêne 2:116).  78. Paris, Histoire poétique de Charlemagne 3–4.  79. Paris, “La chanson de Roland” 94–100, 111. In Romania a few years later, Paris insisted on shared culture, rather than race or territory, as the basis of true nations (“Romani” 21).  80. “Faisons-nous reconnaître pour les fils de ceux qui sont morts à Roncevaux et de ceux qui les ont vengés” (Paris, “La chanson de Roland” 118).  81. Ibid. 102–4. Elsewhere, Paris compares epic composition to the colonial biology of Indian Ocean islands: European plants (akin to Germanic influences) choke out native species (France’s indigenous epic); modern philology uproots the invaders to reveal the vestiges of native life that remain in the undergrowth (“Les contes orientaux” 77).

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 82. “Ne reconnaissez-vous pas, dans ces procédés naïvement atroces, quelquesunes des erreurs qui ne sont pas tout à fait éteintes dans notre pays?” (Paris, “La chanson de Roland” 106).  83. Ibid. 94–98, 107.  84. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” ix (citing Paris’s Histoire poétique de Charlemagne 1–10).  85. Ibid. xiv, lxxi; Dakyns 107; Duggan, “Franco-German” 100–2.  86. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” xlvi.  87. Ibid. clxxiii.  88. Gautier, “Chronique” 498.  89. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” viii, xi, lxxvi, lxxviii, clxxxvii, cc–cci; Les épopées françaises (1892) 2:791.  90. Ibid. lxxviii.  91. Gautier, “Chronique” 495.  92. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” cc; similar sentiment at cxvii.  93. E.g., “Histoire d’un poëme,” lxxvi, cxvii, cxx. Eugène Aubry-Vitet appreciates Gautier’s conception in precisely these terms (1872).  94. Undated notes, CFB, liasse 1, printed in Corbellari, Jospeh Bédier 639. The “House of the Incas” at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 included “ancient” costumes of the Botocudos tribe (Lenotre). Elsewhere, Bédier developed an extended metaphor comparing “primitive” African Zoulous to the myopia of professional Celtists (“Les lais” 847).  95. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme,” cxxvii; Lenient also defines Roland as both quintessentially French and profoundly universal (La poésie patriotique 42).  96. Fustel, “L’organisation de la justice,” “L’invasion,” “De la manière,” Histoire 283–421; Digeon 235–52; Dakyns 196–97; Hartog 86–102; Emery, “The ‘Truth’ About the Middle Ages” 101–4; Emery and Morowitz 19–24.  97. Fustel, “L’Alsace” 96, 100–2.  98. Fustel, “De la manière” 244.  99. Ibid. 245, also 248. 100. On Renan: Hartog 44–61; Thom, especially 33–34; Digeon 235–36. 101. Bähler on connections between Renan and Paris (Gaston Paris 220–32). 102. Renan, “La guerre” 277, La réforme 47. 103. Ibid. 266, La réforme 92. 104. Ibid. 266. In discussing educational reforms, Renan also recommended returning to medieval models (La réforme 101). Bédier cites Renan’s youthful and “erroneous” belief in Roland’s popular origins in Légendes épiques— nonetheless characterizing the page-long passage as “beautiful” (3:237–39). 105. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” 903, 906. 106. Ibid. 904–6.

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107. Ibid. 904. Paris says the same: “la piété envers les aïeux est le plus fort ciment d’une nation” (“Discours” 55). 108. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” 891; Dakyns on Renan’s earlier medievalism, including his shift from idealizing the Celtic to denigrating the Gothic in the 1860s (57–66, 106–7). By contrast, Renan’s youthful notes presage his late convictions, with praise of the national expression of “natural” epics (e.g., “Cahiers” 79–83, 104). 109. “Un gros palefrenier allemand” (Renan, “Prière sur l’Acropole” 754); also Renan, “Joseph-Victor Le Clerc” 664–65. 110. “Le Moyen Age, c’est le métissage indéfini des prétendus Aryens de la forêt saxonne, des soi-disant fils de la Louve, des Gallo-Romains, des HispanoRomains, des Celtes de la Grande-Bretagne, jusqu’aux jours où, vers l’an mil, prennent enfin quelque vague conscience d’elles-mêmes, incertaines encore de leur être profond, les cinq nations, France, Angleterre, Italie, Espagne, Allemagne, qui depuis ont le mieux travaillé pour le bien des hommes” (Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 3). Bédier makes Renan his source of ethnonational history in his earliest courses: “D[è]s le syncrétisme primitif, dit fort bien Renan, les hommes se ressemblaient, à peu près autant que les poisons d’une même espèce” (As of the first syncretism, says Renan so well, men all resembled each other, more or less as much as fish of the same species) (CFB, liasse 7bis, p. 198). Paris’s view was essentially the same (Bähler, Gaston Paris 428–32). 111. Bédier, “Le quatrième centenaire” 368; CFB, liasse 7bis, pp. 199–201. 112. Effros, “The Germanic Invasions.” 113. Ozouf, L’école de la France 339–50; Digeon 99; Dietler; Ehrard; Burguière (on historiography of the Gauls before 1870). 114. E.g., Lacombe; Fourdrignier. 115. Report by the fine arts commission, 1879 (cited in Robert Morrissey 296) (apparently unconvinced by Fustel’s arguments in “Le gouvernement de Charlemagne”). Gautier greeted the statue ultimately placed near Notre Dame with great enthusiasm, imagining that passers-by would be irresistibly drawn to Roland (Les épopées françaises, 2nd ed., 1:548–49). Eugène Talbot, presenting Roland to school children in 1885, referred his readers to the statue as a vibrant representation of Charlemagne’s glorious immortality (58). 116. Citron; Manceron; Maingueneau; Ozouf, L’école, l’église 116–19, L’école de la France 185–213 (on post-Lavisse textbooks); Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen 303–38. 117. Weber, “Gauls versus Franks.” 118. Nouveau plan d’études (1880); Talbot (1885); Roehrich (1885); Amalvi 89– 111; Chervel 89, 117–20, 171–73, 259, 294, 305. Actual depth of study varied greatly among different tracks of study, and with successive educational reforms (Fayolle 69–72).

248

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119. “La plus épique de toutes les nations modernes” (Gautier, Chanson de Roland, 7th ed., viii, xlviii); Gautier, La littérature catholique 81–195 (on Roland’s political and religious models). 120. Brunetière, “L’érudition contemporaine”; Digeon 314–16; Compagnon 114–19. 121. Amalvi 97–100; Ozouf, L’école, l’église 113. 122. Roehrich 6; Bouchor (1899) 14; Guiney 122 (on Roehrich); popular editions by Léon Clédat also evidence a strongly patriotic approach. 123. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1878–79) 10, (1879–80) 19–21, (1880–81) 8–21 (Bédier’s final three years at the lycée); immediately after 1870, the proviseur called for educational reforms to help rebuild France (Lycée de Saint-Denis [1870–71] 10–13). 124. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 121 (further discussion in chapters 3 and 4). 125. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:451–52. 126. Lenient, La poésie patriotique 29, 42. 127. E.g., Bédier, “L’esprit” 108. 128. “Mi-farouche, mi-bonasse” (letter to Gaston Paris, 27 December 1887) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 291); correspondence recently published in Bähler and Corbellari. 129. Course notes (CFB, liasse 105). 130. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 405–6. Reviews in this vein include Lasserre; François; “Les Légendes épiques de M. Joseph Bédier” (L’Action française, 19 June 1914); “Roland, de Turold et de M. Joseph Bédier” (Figaro, 5 May 1934). See chapter 4 for further discussion. 131. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:452, “L’art et le métier” 321; Lenient also criticized Gautier’s Germanism (“La poésie patriotique” 39). Gautier posited German origins in the first volume of Les épopées françaises (1865) but attenuated his views in the revised edition (1878). Despite Bédier’s critiques, his ideology was perfectly compatible with Gautier’s (Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 365). 132. Digeon 388–89. 133. Bédier, “La pression allemande” 6n1; letter to the Marquise, 8 Sept 1911 (BVC, ff. 104v). 134. Fribourg: letter to Brunetière, 5 September 1889 (BNF, NAF MS 25030, f. 269); he recommended that others also pursue foreign teaching assignments for patriotic reasons (letter to Roques, 30 July 1889 [BIF, MS 6142, ff. 96–97]; letter to Francesco Novati, 11 August 1901 [Corbellari, Correspondance no. 55]). On U.S. universities: letters to the Marquise, 24 October 1909, 29 September 1914 (BVC, ff. 81v–82, 132); letters to his family, October 1909 (Corbellari, Correspondance no. 156, 157, 159); letter to Harvard, December 1909 (CFB, liasse 108); Bédier, “L’Institut français”; see also Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 305–12; Charle, La République 345–47. Bédier reportedly praised the popular singer Yvette Guilbert for bringing French songs to American audiences, welcoming her personally as a member of the Société des Anciens Textes Français and assisting her with medieval material; his cousin Louis Artus also worked with her (Emery and Morowitz

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249

215, Knapp and Chipman 225, 289, 295). Citation on University of Strasbourg: “Or nous verrons cela, bientôt, quand nous leur aurons flanqué une râclée, ce qui est plus facile qu’ils ne croient” (letter to the Marquise, 16 October 1913) (BVC, f. 130). 135. Balkans in 1912: “Il n’y a de vivace dans notre sentiment national que notre haine des Allemands” (letter to the Marquise, 17 October 1912) (BVC, ff. 117v–118). During the war: letter to Jean Acher, 8 November 1914 (CFB, liasse 120; Corbellari, Correspondance no. 231); Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 437; Cohen, Ceux que j’ai connus 159. Wartime work: “Car il fera crier les Allemands de colère et d’humiliation” (letter to the Marquise, 9 June 1915) (BVC, f. 140). On Bédier’s war time publications, Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 425–48. After the war: “Je suis résolu, pour ma part, à ne plus jamais frayer avec un Allemand: tout Allemand, tant que je vivrai, restera pour moi un Boche” (Bédier, “Quelle doit”). 136. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 438; e.g., identified himself as the father and teacher of patriots who sacrificed themselves in the war (Roland à Roncevaux 5); carried out a commission from France for the War Library and Museum (letter from Adolph Cohen, 5 June 1920) (CFB, liasse 114); promised to write (although apparently did not) an article of military strategy, “Notre avenir est dans l’air” (Revue de France 1.3 [1921], cover page); wrote the preface to a history of the war in 1926 (“Préface,” Révolution); characterized his efforts to appoint Albert Einstein to the Collège de France as a direct challenge to Germany (Nys). 137. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 563; although evidence of Nazi interest in Bédier remains anecdotal, similar archives were seized and only recently repatriated (Coeuré and Monier; Cingal and Combe). Bédier’s wife may have evoked Bédier’s reputation during the Occupation to keep Pétain from using her father’s metal bust for raw materials; Maurrassians may have maintained a nationalist aura around him. 138. On the Comité d’Études et de Documents sur la Guerre, Bédier joined his former classmates (Émile Mâle, Lucien Herr, Victor Bérard) and current colleagues (Henri Bergson, Charles Andler, Lavisse, Lanson): Andler 281; Ory and Sirinelli 65 (who do not mention Bédier); Hanna. Bédier remained at the Ministry for six years, not returning to the classroom until 1920 (Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 426). 139. “Il nous aidera à conjecturer l’avenir” (Prévost); also Tharaud, “Comment Joseph Bédier contraignit les Allemands à avouer leurs crimes”; “Joseph Bédier,” Annales Politiques; “Joseph Bédier est mort!” Bédier’s theatrical efforts (which include an adaptation of Tristan et Iseut) engage a politics of popular medievalism, similar to Gustave Cohen’s (cf. Solterer). 140. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 385–401, 445, 448; Gégou 151. The play apparently brought Bédier into contact with the famous avant-garde director, Jacques Copeau (Corbellari, Correspondance no. 254). The Catholic editor, Alfred Mame (who published most of Léon Gautier’s works), published an illustrated version in 1931, which Bédier dedicated to his six grandchildren.

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141. “Héréditaires, celles qui ne s’improvisent pas” (Bédier, “La pression allemande” 5). Praising Edmond Rostand, Bédier also insists on the “hereditary” nature of chivalric patriotism (Bédier, Discours 47–51). 142. Bédier, “La pression allemande” 31–33. 143. “Il convient que tous les lettrés puissent lire le vieux poème et s’y plaire” (Bédier, “Quelques scènes” 284); also in Roland à Roncevaux 7–8, published the same year. 144. “Ce style est déjà d’un classique, il est déjà un style noble. Dès le début du XIIe siècle, la France des premières croisades tend de la sorte à créer, à constituer en dignité, par-dessus la diversité de ses dialectes et de ses patois, cette merveille, une langue nationale, celle de son élite, une langue littéraire” (Bédier, “Quelques scènes” 285). Bédier makes a similar claim for the Tristan legend: neither translation nor modernization (even German) can efface the classical dignity of the French original (“Quinze visages”). He applies the same concept to his appreciation of a Québecois poet: Paul Quintal-Dubé uses the “elite” language first fashioned at the time of the Crusades; this language is already that of a unified nation: “langage un et indivisible” (“Préface,” L’éducation poétique). 145. Nichols, “Modernism” 44; Bähler, Gaston Paris 461; Bancel and Blanchard, “Les origines” 35–36. 146. Chagneau-Saintipoly (1915); Notre Épopée (1916); Clément (1916); Morienval (1925); Delteil (1926); especially Charbonneau (1931), on the “épopée de nos contingents coloniaux.” Bédier was consulted about the use of a line from Roland for a war memorial: “se vus murez, esterez seinz martirs” [If you die, you will be holy martyrs] (letter dated 6 September 1921) (CFB, liasse 110). Meanwhile, numerous German war monuments represented Roland as a symbol of valor (Goebel 104–10), testifying to his enduring place in Franco–German conflicts. 147. Redman 202–8 (citing Rostand, Barrès, and Péguy); CFB, liasse 114; Bordeaux, “Joseph Bédier et le Collège de France”; Nys. Journalists covering the war also appreciated Bédier greatly (Vidal; Recouly). 148. Champion 679; also Fidus 359; Cohen, “Joseph Bédier, administrateur”; “Réception de M. Joseph Bédier” (DAS, RF 51.278, p. 19); Foucque in Lycée de Saint-Denis (1920) 24–26; numerous press notices and letters in the same vein (CFB, liasses 112, 113, 114); Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 446. Bédier himself compared his book to Froissart’s fourteenth-century chronicle of the Hundred Years War between France and England (letter to Colonel Frère, 31 October 1918 [Corbellari, Correspondance no. 255]). He undertook the book at the instigation of General Pétain, who became his colleague at the Académie Française in 1929 (Corbellari, Correspondance no. 254). 149. E.g., Legendre (1900); Besson (1925), 7; Soulié (1931); Demaison (1931), 188; Olivier, Exposition 5.2:267; Hanotaux and Martineau 1:viii, xlvi; Guenin (1932).

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Christian missionaries and historians also take up the metaphor: Groffier (1908); Pache (1928); Lhande (1932); Grousset (1939). 150. Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 18, 43. 151. E.g., Gaffarel 90; Legendre i–iv; Livre d’or (1931), preface. 152. Duggan, “Franco-German” 100. 153. Brunetière complained that translation of an epic could make a career (“L’érudition contemporaine” 621–22), and that those who did not admire Roland more than the Iliad were considered poor citizens (“Les fabliaux” 189).

2. Medieval and Colonial Attractions

  1. Dakyns 37–40; Emery and Morowitz 189–91; Jordan.   2. Cited in Dakyns 38. The technologies used in Paris were similar to those used to raze Roman and medieval buildings during France’s 1830 conquest of Algeria (Greenhalgh); Eiffel Tower critics also cast the new structure as a form of “colonization” (Picard [1889] 2:269; Angenot 604).   3. Mandell 31–33.   4. Mandell 36, 56, 82–83, 105, 113.   5. Lapauze 303–4; Guide chaix 62, 87–88, 107, 196; Weber, France, Fin-deSiècle 243.   6. Deloncle, “La continuité”; Demaison 119–23; Leblond, Comment utiliser 5; Lebovics, True France 83–84. Cameroon’s deliverance was compared to the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine (Exposition nationale coloniale 120); historical analysis of German rule in Ames et al.   7. Angoulvant, L’Exposition coloniale interalliée; Lebovics, True France 83–84. Morand described German visitors’ faces as shining with a “fièvre d’amour colonial” (“Rien que la terre” 333).   8. Exposition internationale 45–48; Herbert 12, 36–39.   9. Letters from Texte to Emile Mâle, 30 May 1889, 8 June 1889 (Une amitié 130, 135, 137), and from Mâle to Texte, 11 Feb 1889, 2 June 1889, 30 August 1889 (Une amitié 127, 132, 134, 142). Time spent with De Mahy: Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 53– 54; letter to Gaston Paris, 3 September 1889 (BNF, NAF MS 24431, ff. 318–23).  10. Guide bleu 258; descriptions in Du Buisson; Parville 108–41; Exposition universelle de 1889 13, 139–54, 215–16; Monod, Catalogue, vol. 3. Exhibitors included Bédier’s relatives.  11. “Pacified”: Monod, Exposition 2:144, 172, 220–22; Saint-Pierre et Miquelon had a similar predicament (Palermo). Small economy: Monod, Exposition 2:178– 79, 195; Merveilles (1889) 238; Henrique 1:3–100.  12. Exposition universelle de 1889 14; Debans 311–12. Even some of the plants

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sent for the colonial garden were not native to Réunion (Monod, Exposition 2:193–94).  13. Revue de l’Exposition de 1889 2:91.  14. Cheval and Tchakaloff.  15. Picard (1889) 2:155–56; Parville 111; Debans 340.  16. Images reproduced in Cheval and Tchakaloff (100, 121, 149, 205, 214, 226, 234, 235).  17. Monod, Exposition 1:76–78, 1:332–44, 2:1–86; Richard.  18. Monod, Exposition 1:334.  19. Silverman, “The 1889 Exhibition” 74, 77.  20. Exposition de 1889 90.  21. Merveilles (1889) 632–63, 669.  22. Debans 350.  23. Rearick 120–21; “La reconstruction historique de la Tour de Nesle.”  24. Volait; Glücq, pl. 40. Texte and Mâle both found the Rue du Caire particularly entrancing (Une amitié 137, 142).  25. Debans 353; Grison 45–47.  26. WML 87.1674.19.1.  27. Parville 78.  28. Garnier and Ammann; Picard (1889) 2:243–62; Parville 66–78; Merveilles (1889) 161–214; Glücq (extensive photos); Jourdain; criticism of Garnier’s archeological details in Champier; Goudeau; Le Roux. The “French Renaissance” house looks uncannily like the Palais des Colonies (Isay 188; Debans 324).  29. Debans 118, 121, 122; Monod, Exposition 1:65.  30. Le Roux.  31. Goudeau 84.  32. “Nos contemporains les plus éloignés et nos plus vieux ancêtres défileront ainsi sous nos yeux” (M.P., “Histoire de l’habitation humaine,” L’Exposition de Paris de 1889 7:50).  33. Champier; Picard (1889) 2:245, 257.  34. Silverman, “The 1889 Exhibition” 79–80; some criticized this temporal contrast (Guide bleu 96).  35. Monod, Exposition 1:65; Parville 77; Garnier and Ammann 619–49, 734–71.  36. Grison 134–35.  37. Cited in Dakyns 74–75.  38. Dias, Musée 42–44, 168–72; Herbert 43, 51–53; Effros on the roles of early medieval artifacts in constructing national history.  39. “De pure race franque”; “grand, blond, dolichocéphale” (Merveilles [1900] 2:74). Anthropologists used this term to describe the ruling class of the Gauls (Poliakov 278).  40. Eudel; full description in Golvin.

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 41. Roehrich 4.  42. Silverman, Art nouveau 44–45.  43. History of images in Declerck. The seal’s colonial medievalism was obvious to Paul Morand in 1931 (“Rien que la terre” 345).  44. Souvenir booklet: L’Exposition en miniature (WML 86.19.308). Réunionnais republicans: Lahuppe 22.  45. Silverman, Art nouveau 44–45, 290–93, plate 12; Exposition de Paris 1:200; Picard (1900) 1:443–50, 2:225; Moniteur des Expositions: Organe de l’Exposition de 1900 (cover).  46. Rearick 139–41.  47. Letter to Joseph Texte, 6 June 1900 (Une amitié 294–95). Bédier also helped organize an international history conference (letters to Johan Vising and Georges Renard in Corbellari, Correspondance no. 45, 47, 48, 49).  48. Garsault 296–97, 299, 301. Garsault also mentions Bédier’s recently deceased brother, Édouard, who had taught at the island’s lycée (163).  49. The bar-kiosk stands today in the Bois de Vincennes, in the former Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale.  50. Garsault 260–61, 289, 304.  51. “[C’est un] abrégé du monde connu, qui résume toute la terre, qui contient un échantillon de tous les climats et de tous les produits du sol, qui offre, dans un espace restreint, un exemple des plus grands phénomènes de la Nature, depuis le lac insondable, jusqu’au volcan couronné de flamme . . .” (Garsault 1–2); also Noufflard 151–59. The Leblonds also compare the island to Eden (L’île enchantée 16–27; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs).  52. E.g., Noufflard commenting that life in Saint-Denis transported him abruptly to the Middle Ages (159); Pujarniscle conflating colonial geography with medieval time (68–69).  53. Charles-Roux 66–79, 222; Picard (1900) 4:341–42, 352.  54. Charles-Roux 28, also Hale 32–84.  55. “un peu mélancoliques, comme d’honorables et vieilles personnes dont l’histoire est terminée” (Quantin 177).  56. Malo.  57. Charles-Roux 1, 3.  58. On medieval, Emery and Morowitz 204.  59. L’Exposition de Paris (1900) 3:11–13.  60. Guide chaix 2; Lapauze 42–45.  61. Picard (1900) 7:244–46.  62. Guide chaix 253, 254; Charles-Roux 23–28; Picard (1900) 7:240–43; Robida, Le Vieux Paris (the cover evokes the iconography of the Fluctuat nec mergitur seal); Robida, Le Vieux Paris en 1900; Emery, “Protecting the Past”; Emery and Morowitz 206.

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 63. Gers 252–53.  64. Exposition universelle de 1900: le Vieux Paris 195; Guide chaix 261. Cultivation had begun only recently on Réunion, following various unsuccessful efforts since 1863 (Du Buisson 141–64).  65. Exposition universelle de 1900: le Vieux Paris 41, 192; Emery and Morowitz 192–208.  66. Guide illustré 110.  67. Combes, “Paris en 1400” 39–40; Gayet.  68. La Vielle Auvergne: Picard (1900) 7:237–40; Démy 576–77; Quantin 356–58; Guide chaix 57; Exposition de Paris (1900) 3:256–66, 313; Merveilles (1900) 2:518–20, 567. Military exhibit: Quantin 302–4; Picard (1900) 2:217–37; Exposition de Paris (1900) 305–7; Merveilles (1900) 2:156, 631–34.  69. Guide chaix 37; Merveilles (1900) 2:427, 434. Photos in Exposition universelle de 1900: catalogue officiel illustré 5; Les beaux-arts 125.  70. Le costume de la femme à travers les ages (Paris, 1900), no. 6–11; Musée rétrospectif de la classe 16: médecine et chirurgie (Paris, 1900); Musée rétrospectif de la classe 17: instruments de musique (Paris, 1900), etc. On popularity: Démy 592–94, Vogüé 391.  71. Merveilles (1900) 2:424; Emery and Morowitz on the retrospective art exhibit (76–77).  72. Emery, “Protecting the Past” 79–80; Emery and Morowitz 205–6. Vogüé found the art retrospective particularly reassuring (“Nous sortions du Petit Palais plus sûr de la France”); he even discerned the distant origins of democracy in the medieval artisan (393).  73. Le Tour du Monde: Picard (1900) 7:225–27; Lapauze 348; Guide chaix 111–12; Guide illustré 79–80; Combes, “Le Tour du Monde” (on the persuasive use of “real” indigenous people). Panorama Transatlantique: Merveilles (1900) 2:694; Picard (1900) 7:224–25. Maréorama: Lapauze 356; Guide chaix 132. Cinéorama: Merveilles (1900) 2:694; Garelick; Maxwell 24–26.  74. Lannoy 93–94; Guide chaix 111–12; Talmeyr 199; Emery and Morowitz 172–75; also Monod in 1889 (Exposition 1:139–40) and Demaison in 1931 (20–21).  75. “Aujourd’hui, en effet, évoque hier” (Combes, “Paris en 1400” 22).  76. Lapauze 288, 378; Guide chaix 252, 281, 288; Charles-Roux 1–3, 19, 227; Emery and Morowitz 202–3; Lebovics, True France 70.  77. “Un musée composé des objets de torture, des armes, des vêtements et des ustensiles du moyen âge est aussi insignifiant que l’exposition des fétiches et que la table des sacrifices de Béhanzin, si l’imagination ne supplée pas à tout ce qui manque pour donner à ces objets leur véritable sens” (Charles-Roux 228).  78. Guide chaix 252, 288.  79. “Si je n’aimais le Moyen Age, je l’aurais aimé avenue de Suffren” (Lannoy 94); Lannoy had recently modernized the medieval drama Le mystère d’Adam (1898). .

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 80. “Comment éviter une recrudescence d’orgueil et de foi en la vitalité de la patrie . . .” (Paul Hervieu addressing the Académie Française, cited in CharlesRoux 236).  81. The exhibit at the Petit Palais included household objects decorated with illustrations of Tristan and Iseult (Merveilles [1900] 2:428).  82. Letter to Joseph Texte, 6 June 1900 (Une amitié 294–95).  83. Guide chaix 288; Emery and Morowitz 113–16, 184–89. Charles-Roux considered the exposition’s colonial workers “quite fond” [très friands] of medievalizing cafés-concerts (26).  84. Charles-Roux 227.  85. Lyautey, “Cérémonie,” “Inauguration” (on the errors committed in the name of assimilation); Reynaud-Paligot 253–55; De L’Estoile 57–94; Martin Thomas 54–89.  86. Wilder on colonial humanism (French Imperial Nation-State 41–145), Young on “imperial saming” (White Mythologies 12–17).  87. “Aujourd’hui la manière de vie de ces peuples se rapproche plus que vous ne le croyez de la vôtre”; “Les idées des autres hommes sont souvent les vôtres, mais exprimées d’une façon différente” (Demaison 20).  88. Quantin 187.  89. Antoine Bertin, poet and friend of Parny (Foucque, “Apport” 106–10). Auguste Lacaussade, poet and rival of Leconte de Lisle (Foucque, “Apport” 110– 13; Jobit). Pierre Bouvet, famous Marine commander under both the First and Second Empires. Lacaze, a prominent military commander and acquaintance of Bédier’s, visited Bédier’s insular family in 1934 for the centenary celebration of De Mahy’s birth (Le mémorial 5:435). Dodu famously saved a French regiment during the war of 1870 (Foucque compared her to Jeanne d’Arc, Au long de la vie 120).  90. “Quand on vous parle des Bertin, Lacaussade, Parny, Leconte de Lisle, Léon Dierx, Bouvet, Lacaze, Joseph Bédier, Roland Garros et Juliette Dodu, vous êtes tenté de croire, tant leur génie est le nôtre, qu’ils sont nés à Paris ou dans une de nos provinces. Pourtant, ils sont nés là–bas, en plein Océan Indien, à la Réunion” (Demaison 53).  91. “Métropole Seconde du monde français de l’Océan Indien” (Leblond, “Île de la Réunion” 10). This argument was not new: Leblond, La patrie créole (27 September 1911) 3; Artaud 249; Exposition nationale coloniale 154; Le joyau (np); Régismanset 57–58.  92. Leblond, “Île de la Réunion” 5; Le miracle de la race 81.  93. Olivier, Exposition 5.2:997; Livre d’or (1931) 135; Larrouy.  94. Aldrich, “Le guide.”  95. Aldrich notes that Réunion’s railway represents a rare glimpse of “European” technology in Demaison’s guide (“Le guide” 610).  96. Undated typescript of “Notice sur le Palais de la Réunion” (ADR 8M97);

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minutes from the Comité Local, 18 May 1930 (Hindu film), 15 September 1930 (furnishings) (ADR 8M91). At least one metropolitan guide, however, identified Réunion’s “orientalism” as one of its key attractions (M. C. May 2–3).  97. Hoarau 111, 119–20; minutes from the Comité Local, 19 March 1930 (ADR 8M91). Initially, however, islanders sought to avoid the expense of an independent pavilion by requesting space in the Madagascar pavilion (letters and cables from 1929, ADR 8M96).  98. Olivier, Exposition 5.2:1014; Livre d’or (1931) 138. The Château Morange once sheltered Abd el-Krim (exiled to Réunion from the Rif region of Morocco in 1926); Lacaze had grown up in the Villa du Chaudron (ADR 8M97).  99. ADR 8M96. 100. Positive reactions: Larrouy; Livre d’or (1931) 138; typewritten note signed by the commissioner Estèbe (ADR 8M97). Official program: Vigato (with no mention of Réunion). 101. Martinique and Guadeloupe criticism: Morton, Hybrid Modernities 31. Visitor disappointment: unsigned and undated typescript (ADR 8M97). 102. Olivier, Exposition 5.2:1017. 103. In Marseille, Bédier’s name appeared on a large map of Réunion; the library of creole writers included his publications; his acceptance speech to the Académie was widely cited; organizers envisioned him writing the preface to Réunion’s catalogue (letter dated 16 November 1921, ADR 8M85); Artaud 248, 249; Exposition nationale coloniale 154, 156; Le joyau (np); L’Île de la Réunion (1923) 63–65; L’Île de la Réunion (1925) 7, 129–31. 104. Olivier, Exposition 5.2:1020, 1016; Livre d’or (1931) 138; ADR 8M96, 8M97 (list of all the names); a monument for De Mahy was also planned (Repiquet 16–17). 105. ADR 8M91 (inventory of shipments to Paris), ADR 8M106 (inventory of film scenes, letters from 1932 related to screenings). 106. “Le nom de Joseph Bédier rayonne d’une gloire pure et élevée dans tout l’Univers” (Leblond, “Île de la Réunion” 1); Barquissau, “La participation agricole” 749; Bayard 166; Ce qu’il faut voir (np); Demaison 53; Livre d’or (1931) 137; Olivier, Exposition 5.2:1006. 107. Olivier, Exposition 5.1:312–19. 108. Livre d’or (1931) 305–17; Exposition coloniale (section portugaise); Olivier, Exposition 7:340–41; Deloncle, “La participation italienne.” 109. Lebovics, True France 59–62. 110. Cf. misleading description of the woman as washing gold (rather than harvesting vanilla) in Livre d’or (1931) 19; overviews of the building in Le bas–relief; Le Palais; Olivier, Exposition 5.1:7–155; Morton, “National and Colonial.” 111. “Panthéon de la France coloniale” (Olivier, “Philosophie” 293). Many of the same names figure in the Salles des Croisades at Versailles.

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112. Morton, Hybrid Modernities 292; Aldrich, Vestiges 41–42. Lyautey and many others embraced a colonial understanding of the Crusades (Ageron, “L’Exposition coloniale” 566; Hanotaux, “Discours”; Hanotaux and Martineau 1:vii, xiv–xv; Hardy, Histoire de la colonisation). This vision remained current into the 1960s (e.g., Français d’outre–mer; Lebel, Les établissements; Les constructeurs de la France). 113. Olivier Exposition 5.1:117–55 (especially 147); Nicoll 118; Demaison 185–91; Fournier 349; Besson, “La rétrospective.” In this same vein, the Messageries Maritimes decorated La Normandie with a mural of a crusader knight (Golan 107). 114. Deloncle, “La continuité”; he also presided at a conference on Latin pronunciation (Olivier, Exposition 4:177). 115. “La France est le four où cuit le pain intellectuel de l’humanité”; “[La France] a créé pour tous les peuples” (Deschamps 50–51). Deschamps echoes Mâle’s conclusion about the influence of French Gothic architecture: “la France, comme l’Athènes de Périclès, a créé pour tous les peuples” (cited in Bédier, Commentaires 64). 116. “Le onzième siècle! C’est celui où la France essaime pour la première fois et fonde dans l’Italie méridionale et en Sicile, puis au Portugal, puis en Angleterre, de durables établissements” (Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 5). Bédier published nearly the same comments a year later (“La poésie” 821). Bédier’s belief in the “miraculous” eleventh century stretches back at least to the Légendes épiques (4:464); he had intended to develop a course on eleventh-century literature (letter to the Marquise, 8 September 1911) (BVC, f. 106). 117. Similar vocabulary and explanations by Albert Sarraut (13, 38, 82–83). Bédier later uses the bee metaphor to characterize creole migration (see chapter 3). 118. “Peut–on dire aussi qu’elle ait créé pour tous les temps, et particulièrement pour les jours que nous vivons?” (Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 5). Bédier answers both yes and no in this highly equivocal essay; he asserts French universalism more confidently in Commentaires 64 and “La poésie” 822. 119. Nicoll 118–19; Olivier, Exposition 5.1:150–55, 5.2:1021–22. 120. Olivier, Exposition 5.1:93–98; Le palais no. 222; Leblond, “Ce que la littérature doit à une colonie,” Revue bleue (4 Oct 1930); Cheval, “Souvenirs” 49. Ary Leblond expanded the installation when he became museum director in 1935 (Fournier 353–55, Cheval, “Souvenirs” 37–50). 121. “Le spiritualisme de notre Moyen Age s’est enrichi des leçons tragiques de nos Révolutions” (Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 51). 122. “Ce monde qu’on prétend vieux, n’a que l’âge de ceux qui l’habitent” (Exposition internationale 23). 123. Labbé, Exposition v. 11, pl. II (Bulletin officiel), IX (commemorative stamp), X and XVII (publicity pamphlets), XIV (façade of Printemps department store), LVI (Eiffel Tower); Saroul (cover). 124. Peer 71–72, 148, 154–56; Lebovics, True France 164–71.

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125. Labbé, Exposition 1:xi; Livre d’or (1937) 26; Lécuyer. Similar concerns had appeared already in 1900 and 1931 (Charles-Roux 155; Olivier, Exposition 5.1:389– 97; Véra). 126. Labbé, Exposition 8.1:i–xxxii, 8.2:91–92, 114–17; Labbé, Le régionalisme; Livre d’or (1937) 187–90; Namer 37–39; Peer 53–98; Golan 118–22. On the history of French regionalism: Gildea 166–213; Wright. 127. Peer 58, 78–87; Namer 39; Livre d’or (1937) 185; Trémois. The architecture owed much to Charles Letrosne’s Murs et toits pour les pays de chez–nous (Paris: Niestlé, 1923). In 1900, the “Voyages animés” offered tourists an animated trip to reconstructions of France’s main historical attractions (Quantin 356–58; Livre d’or [1900] 2:228). A similar diorama (featuring primarily medieval monuments) was proposed for 1937 but not built (WML XM1999.133.2). 128. Artisans 1937; Exposition internationale 100; Exposition Paris 1937 1; Livre d’or (1937) 193–200, 211–17. 129. Peer 88–94, 157–59; Ezra 25–26; Exposition internationale 96; Labbé, Exposition 4:589–91; Livre d’or (1937) 210. Ezra argues, however, that colonial exhibits lacked a pedagogical component and were generally more exploitative (35–36); Henri Clouzot noted that the provincial artisans, unlike the colonials, used modern technology (to him, all the colonial arts looked alike: “Le brodeur tunisien n’a pas d’autre façon de tirer l’aiguille que son confrère algérien et tous les motifs décoratifs de l’Islam se ressemblent”). 130. Peer 165; also Ezra 33–36; Exposition internationale 99. 131. Exposition internationale 104–14; Livre d’or (1937) 185–92; Peer 97; Gerson. 132. “Tous ces peuples noirs ou jaunes, sans rien perdre de leur originalité propre, rangés sous sa tutelle ou dans sa souveraineté ne faisaient qu’un dans la main de la France” (Livre d’or [1937] 208; similar affirmation of unity in Exposition internationale 24). 133. Exposition internationale 145–48; Labbé, Exposition 8, 4:130–51; Centre rural. 134. Peer 99–134. Not everyone found the effort successful (Maurice Barret). 135. Labbé, Exposition 4:2–3; Exposition internationale 94–104; Livre d’or (1937) 205–24. 136. Exposition internationale 100; Favier, pl. 30. 137. Livre d’or (1937) 208; Béranger; Labbé, Exposition 1:ix; Album programme 40; Reallon 37. 138. Livre d’or (1937) 191. Indeed, the regional exhibit drew inspiration from the 1931 colonial exposition (Peer 56). Around the same time, the Revue du folklore français began appearing with a new title: Revue du folklore français et du folklore colonial (1932) (Lebovics, True France 148). 139. Labbé, Exposition 4:87; Le Lorrain 16; Dupays, 256–58; Exposition internationale 102; Saroul 73. The roofline seems drawn straight from the metropolitan authority of Émile Bayard’s catalogue of colonial style (163).

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140. Labbé, Exposition 4:87. 141. Metropolitan views: Le Lorrain 16. Réunionnais organizers: letter from Auguste Brunet, 18 April 1935 (ADR 8M83). Brunet feared that the tricentennial of the Caribbean colonies would overshadow Réunion (whose tricentennial fell the following year). 142. Labbé, Exposition 4:89; Saroul 74. Corbellari states that Bédier was a member of a “commission culturelle” (Joseph Bédier 485), but I have found no record of this appointment (cf. Labbé, Exposition 1:448, 464). Bédier, Leconte de Lisle, and the Leblonds carried such fame that they featured in publications advertising the exhibit to foreigners (Rageot 28). 143. Dupays 258; Lange 37–38. 144. Labbé, Exposition 4:84, 94, 96; Bayard likewise discussed nature and culture, not architecture, in the Réunion section of his compendium of colonial architecture (161–66). Metropolitan agricultural groups met with similar resistance from Labbé (Peer 107). 145. Labbé, Exposition 4:84, 85, 91, 95–96. The same held for all colonial arts: schools directed by colonial administrators “corrected” and “improved” indigenous products so as to increase their appeal to European consumers, while guarding against “tasteless hybridity” (Reallon; Clouzot). This approach overturns Olivier’s 1931 praise for European influence on overseas arts (Exposition 5.1:56). 146. Peer 89–91. 147. Letters dated 7 April 1935 and 12 January 1936 (ADR 8M83). 148. The craft issue persisted in later decades. In 1969, in response to metropolitan desires for traditional art forms, training centers were in fact opened on Réunion to promote, among other crafts, the distinctive lace from Ciloas; handcrafts, however, faced competition from industrial products imitating the Réunionnais style (“façon–réunionnaise”) (Le mémorial 7:149–54). 149. Olivier, Exposition 5.1:51–53; Ezra 37–39, 44; Yee. Colonial novels made interracial romance a seductive theme (e.g., Pierre Mille and André Demaison, La femme et l’homme nu); De Mahy made successful métissage a motive for colonizing Madagascar (cited in Ageron, France coloniale 117–18). Others, however, responded by promoting white European immigration (Reynaud-Paligot 93–105, 276–78). 150. Ezra 37–38; Yee, “Métissage.” 151. “À l’exception de l’une d’elles, admirable créole de race blanche de la Réunion, et qui, pour cette raison, se sait hors concours” (Dupays 271); L’Illustration no. 4927 (7 August 1937); Pascal. Ezra analyzes the racial eugenics that underlie the selection of the “ivory”-skinned winner from Guadeloupe (37–42); see also Hale 138–39. Réunionnais beauty pageants remain frought with colonial politics (Prabju and Murdoch). 152. “Quels rêves chacune d’elles ne fait-elle pas pendant son premier séjour à Paris, avant de s’en retourner dans son pays reprendre sagement sa tâche

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quotidienne!” (Dupays 272); contrast with interview reported by Pascal, where Miss Garé (Miss Guyane) comments that only “old peasants” wear the traditional costume she’ll put on for the ceremony: she must go back in time to look properly “ethnic”; she plans to continue living in Paris. 153. Labbé, Exposition v. 11, pl. IV (ticket); v. 4, pl. XXVI (Palais de l’Artisanat); WML XC1997.16.42, TD1990.224.1 (souvenirs). 154. “À ce mot métier, des souvenirs se lèvent: les artisans du Moyen Age, les corporations de l’Ancien Régime! Au Centre des Métiers, n’est-ce pas la vieille France qui se reflétait et se prolongeait dans notre vie actuelle par la grâce du Progrès?” (Labbé, Exposition 7:308, also 11:508). 155. Labbé, Exposition 7:310. 156. “Ces premiers gestes de l’individu primitif qui sont la source de toute chose, n’ont pas disparu avec eux. Chaque génération les a transmis à la génération suivante en les perfectionnant. Ils sont devenus aujourd’hui le subtil héritage enfoui dans les doigts agiles des artisans qui, dans les animateurs de l’Exposition, ont trouvé d’ardents protecteurs dont l’ambition est de vouloir précisément réconcilier ce qu’on supposait capable de tout tuer et ce qui ne doit pas mourir” (Exposition internationale 24). 157. Labbé, Exposition 5:167 (provincial); Livre d’or (1937) 223–34 (colonial); Herbert 14. In practice, most artisans worked for salary (Peer 88–93, 157–59; Ezra 25–26); the colonial organizers were particularly concerned about separating artisans from vendors (Album programme 40; Géraud). 158. Livre d’or (1937) 219. 159. Peer 131–32. 160. Exposition internationale 95 (Etats du Levant), 98 (AOF), 99 (Martinique). The Section de Synthèse featured a planisphère illustrating France’s colonial history (Labbé, Exposition 4:126). The exhibit honoring the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher, curated by Ary Leblond, included a fifteenth-century tapestry depicting a “first encounter” with black Africans (Labbé, Exposition 4:597). 161. “[Ils] ajoutent à cette reconstitution de la Vieille France, une brillante note exotique, évocatrice de notre Empire d’Outre-mer” (Exposition internationale 144); Peer 59; Favier; detailed description of medieval reconstructions in Album programme 46; related performances included a medieval Passion play in front of Notre Dame (Exposition internationale 182). 162. Golan and Wakeman on “nostalgic modernism,” Saler on “medieval.” 163. Labbé, Exposition 2:53–54, 406–17. 164. De L’Estoile 73–204; Herbert 41–67; Verrier. 165. Exposition internationale 29–32; Labbé, Exposition 5:372–77. 166. Herbert 83–121; Peer 135–36, 144–53; Lebovics, True France 135–61; Jackson 125–30; August. 167. Chefs-d’œuvre v–vi; medieval sculpture catalogued in Vitry.

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168. “un coup d’œuil sur le passé, bien loin de diminuer le présent, découvrirait les sources profondes de l’art aujourd’hui, où il puise des forces constantes de renouvellement” (Labbé, Exposition 4:176–81). 169. Chefs-d’œuvre 569. 170. Letter to Mme Herr, 14 February 1937 (AHC, LH 8, dossier 5a). Bédier probably met Blum through Lucien Herr, although Blum was also an accomplished literary critic who published side by side with Bédier in the Revue de Paris (v. 20, 1913). 171. Rydell 62. 3. Between Paris and Saint-Denis

  1. E.g., Tharaud, Le fauteuil 66; “[an] amalgamation of opposites” (Hazard 1).   2. Lot, Joseph Bédier 43; Nykrog 300–1; Gumbrecht 29; Duggan, “FrancoGerman” (no mention of Bédier). Corbellari’s assessment of “virulent” nationalism gets no closer to the issue (“Joseph Bédier, Philologist and Writer” 273).   3. Presidents Émile Loubet (1899–1906, who signed Dreyfus’s pardon) and Raymond Poincaré (1913–20, Bédier’s colleague at the Académie Française). See letters from Bédier to the Marquise (14 May 1910, 16 October 1913), Mario Roques (19 September 1911), Jean Acher (8 November 1914), and Raymond Poincaré (28 May 1919, 28 May 1925, 22 December 1929) (all edited in Corbellari, Correspondance; also Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 425–31).   4. E.g., Hubert Bourgin, Charles Péguy (Leroy; Lebovics, Alliance; Brian Jenkins). Bédier maintained a friendly collaboration with Péguy (Corbellari, Correspondance nos. 59, 110).   5. Interview, Christophe Bédier (25 July 2004); Adolphe Bédier 12–13, 90; Lobligeois.   6. Hedo-Vivier 22–36; Pluchon 308; Valynseele 38. De Mahy’s uncle DenisFrançois Kervéguen was one of the clan’s few republicans (Hedo-Vivier 22–36).   7. Gagneur, “Prosopographie” 108–9, 171–217, 284–300.   8. Ibid. 378; Hedo-Vivier 31–32; Eve, Jeu politique 6; CFB, liasse [109] (carton XXXIV, with packet 109 listed in the inventory as “nonexistent”: the unnumbered packet contains the bulk of Bédier’s correspondence from Réunion).   9. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 41.  10. E.g., letter from Mme Arsène Blot (2 September 1929) (CFB, liasse 113); letter to Dr. and Mme Brun (25 November 1933) (BNF, NAF MS 25124 [1], ff. 55–56); “Joseph Bédier,” Le Réunionnais (31 August 1938). Bédier’s 1909 trip to the United States generated gossip on Réunion that he had earned a small fortune (letters from his wife and others) (CFB, liasses 110, 111). Bédier claimed to have refused assistance from his politically connected relative (letters to Gaston Paris, 24 July 1821 [BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 351–52].

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 11. CFB, liasse 11; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 486; Lévy-Brühl 64; Charles-Roux 23; J. L. 207–8.  12. De Mahy, Le régime politique; Hedo-Vivier 5–75, 84–85, 90, 93–95, 122–24; Binoche 493–94.  13. Various letters from family members (CFB, liasse [109]); Dictionnaire biographique 2:131–32.  14. Eve, Jeu politique 5–6, 34–44; Lucas, Bourbon 313–23; Du Tertre once tried to legislate against parades as disruptive of social order (Eve, “Éducation” 163).  15. Fuma, Un exemple. Economic woes dominate letters sent to Bédier by his family members. Bédier’s widowed sister-in-law Julia apparently considered offering her children for adoption to assure their future (CFB, liasse [109]). In this same critical period, Bédier’s mother, Céline, mused that she hoped for a workers’ strike, which would really bother the owners, but doubted that it would happen (11 January 1893, CFB, liasse [109]).  16. Eve, Jeu politique 28–39.  17. Ibid. 28–34.  18. Letter from Du Tertre to Joseph Bédier, 13 December 1892 (CFB, liasse [109]); Nomdedeu-Maestri 1:82; Eve, Jeu politique 37–44; Une élection législative de l’île de la Réunion, 24 avril 1910 (ADR PB 971).  19. Gagneur, “Prosopographie” 393–401.  20. Nomdedeu-Maestri 1:57, 1:119, 2:47 (citing Le journal de la Réunion, 9 June 1905).  21. Gasparin cited in “Lucien Gasparin”; Brunet cited in Urruty 27.  22. E.g., the radical-socialists excluded Gasparin and Brunet for supporting Poincaré in 1928; Gasparin voted both for reestablishing relations with the Vatican (1920) and for suspending them (1925) (Vivier).  23. Eve, Jeu politique 52.  24. Ibid. 10–11, 15.  25. Leblond, “Patriotisme socialiste” (1902); “Sur les élections” (1902); Les vies parallèles (1902, a socialist novel); La société française (1905); Leconte de Lisle 355 (on the Revolution).  26. Adolphe Bédier 80.  27. “Marius-Ary Leblond,” Le peuple, 31 Oct 1911, p. 1 (transcribed in Ah-Koon and Duchêne 2:121); Soulairol; “Joseph Bédier,” Petit Marseillais.  28. Leblond, La Réunion et Paris 6; Le peuple, 1 Feb 1911, p. 2 (transcribed in Ah-Koon and Duchêne 2:36).  29. Hedo-Vivier 103–4.  30. Barrès, Scène et doctrines 72; Maurras, Au signe 122–32; Boyer-Vidal 65–68; Hedo-Vivier 136–39, 173–75, 203–8; Rioux 31–50; Weber, Action Française 20–22.  31. Dreyfus support: letters to Texte, 12 July 1899, 29 August 1899 (Une amitié 282, 285–86) (with details of the Affair dating back to 1894); Bédier later wrote of

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the pleasure of meeting a “free-thinking” military officer who knew all four volumes of Joseph Reinach’s history of the Affair (letter to the Marquise, 15 September 1905 [BVC, ff. 30–30r]) (Reinach was also a regular at the Marquise’s salon, and corresponded with Bédier during the war of 1914–1918). Salon of Marquise Arconati-Visconti: Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 325–33; Laforêt; Ory and Sirinelli 34– 38; Dreyfus alludes to the salon in his memoires (415–16). In honor of her father, Alphonse Peyrat, the Marquise gave substantial sums to both the Collège de France and the Sorbonne; she later financed Bédier’s trips to research pilgrimage routes for the Légendes épiques (Bédier dedicated the third volume to her) (letters dated 8 September and 23 November 1908) (BVC, ff. 62, 67). Bédier probably met her in 1901 (letter to Gaston Paris, 2 August 1901 [BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 409v]), and expresses warm affection throughout his correspondence (1903–14) (e.g., BVC, ff. 24–25, 125–26, 135v–36). From the United States in 1909, he wrote: “Il me semble que, de plus loin, je vous aime plus tendrement, ou du moins que je suis plus hardi à vous le dire” [It seems to me that, from further away, I love you more tenderly, or at least I am more bold in telling you so] (BVC, f. 82v).  32. “La grande leçon de moralité dont vous parlez, la France l’a déjà reçue dans cette crise salutaire des dernières années. J’ose dire qu’elle a donné cette leçon plus encore qu’elle ne l’a reçue: car quel autre peuple que le nôtre aurait trouvé tant d’hommes prêts à sacrifier leur vie ou leur pain pour délivrer un innocent?” (letter to the Marquise, BVC, ff. 19–19r); Corbellari dates this letter January 1904 (Joseph Bédier 329n90).  33. Letter to the Marquise, 13 July 1906 (BVC, ff. 40–41). The month before, Dreyfus had given Bédier a copy of the report that had led to the reopening of the 1899 conviction (letter to the Marquise, BVC, f. 39).  34. Letter dated 23 November 1908 (BVC, f. 67r).  35. Lot, Joseph Bédier 41–42; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 328.  36. Compagnon 64–68; Charle, Naissance 183–200.  37. Compagnon 36.  38. Lanson 13 (“Le passage est continu de l’âme française du Xe siècle à celle du XIXe”); Compagnon 168, 176; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 142–44, 309, 485; Ory 38.  39. Mentors: Limentani; Ridoux 230–33. Friends: Bédier expresses profound admiration and gratitude for Herr throughout his life (e.g., letters to Texte in the 1890s [Une amitié 191, 252, 258]; to Herr’s widow in 1937 [AHC, LH 8, dossier 5a]). In 1905, Herr inspired Bédier to a minor activist gesture, signing a letter protesting the revocation of academic freedom’s in Russia (cosigners included Lavisse, Lucien Lévy-Brühl, Charles Seignobos, Émile Durkheim, Juarès, Monod, and Charles Andler) (AHC, LH 1, dossier 5). After Herr’s death, Bédier pleaded with Mario Roques to provide him with similar intellectual support (28 June 1928 [BIF, MS 6142, ff. 176v, 177]). On Herr’s tempestuous socialism and intellectual influence: Andler; Charle, Naissance 82–93; Compagnon 37, 72; Corbellari 52; Ory 6,

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15; Ridoux 342; Lindenberg and Meyer. Creoles: Bédier met Heredia (disciple of Leconte de Lisle, friend of Léon Dierx, acquaintance of the Leblonds) through Gaston Paris—as early as 1896, when Bédier was still a student (Archives de la société civile du château de Cerisy-la-Salle). Bédier later thanked Heredia warmly for some unspecified support of “Tristan” (letter dated 20 November 1903) (BAR, MS 14356, no. 6). Collaborators: Bédier commented that Artus “would be charming, if he were Dreyfusard” (letter to Texte, 6 June 1900, Une amitié 294). Colleagues: Compagnon 119–24; Ory and Sirinelli.  40. “Quand Jaurès dit du bien de quelqu’un, je l’en crois tout de suite, et j’estime ce quelqu’un, d’emblée” (letter to the Marquise, 29 March 1906) (BVC, f. 36).  41. Letter to the Marquise, 15 September 1905 (BVC, f. 30r). Bédier had previously campaigned with his father-in-law (letters to Gaston Paris, 16 August 1893 [BNF, NAF MS 24431, ff. 374–75]; Brunetière, 27 August 1893 [BNF, NAF MS 25030, f. 280bis]). Bédier did join the village’s Cercle Républicain (Berry 2), and members remained hopeful that he would consider public office (letter dated 4 June 1920) (CFB, liasse 114).  42. Letters to the Marquise, 20 June 1906, 29 July 1907, 3 October 1907, 17 September 1910 (BVC, ff. 38–39, 45r, 48, 89r); Baal, “Un salon dreyfusard” 441–45.  43. “Je suis loin de construire la Cité future sur le même plan que Jaurès; mais j’aime son discours précisément parce qu’il y bâtit une cité autre” (letter to the Marquise, 20 June 1906) (BVC, f. 38).  44. “Je n’approuve ni son internationalisme, ni son collectivisme, ni, je crois, aucune de ses idées politiques: ce qui revient à dire que je suis d’un autre bord que lui, d’un autre parti. Mais en sommes-nous à faire aujourd’hui cette découverte que Jaurès est un socialiste révolutionnaire, et qu’il en était un déjà il y a quelque vingt ans? Ne le savions-nous pas, et devons-nous, à chaque incident de la vie quotidienne, nous étonner s’il n’agit pas comme ferait un conservateur ou un radical? Est-ce parce qu’il rêve du ‘grand Soir,’ est-ce comme révolutionnaire qu’il est ‘méprisable’? Soit. Mais alors, ce n’est pas d’aujourd’hui qu’il est méprisable, c’est depuis vingt ans” (letter to the Marquise, 23 October 1910) (BVC, ff. 95v–97v).  45. Corbellari makes a related analysis, reaching a somewhat different conclusion (Joseph Bédier 330–33).  46. The Marquise: Baal, “Jaurès et les salons” 110. Bédier: letter to the Marquise, 13 August 1914 (BVC, f. 114).  47. Lerner.  48. “Mais, quand on n’est pas soi-même un homme d’action, il faut se garder, à mon sens, de juger les hommes d’action sur chacun des faits de la politique quotidienne. . . . Et puis, auquel de nos amis demanderons-nous d’aimer la patrie précisément du même cœur que nous?” (letter to the Marquise, 29 October 1905 [BVC, ff. 32r–33r]); Bédier’s next letter continues the same theme of extremes and the value of diversity (ff. 34–35).

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 49. “Il est bon que certains Français gardent longtemps leurs rancunes, il est bon que certains les aient déjà oubliées. L’attitude de la France ne saurait résulter d’une consigne, qui tiendrait en quelques bouts de phrases, et que tous appliqueraient, à la prussienne, immédiatement et mécaniquement. C’est de l’effort infiniment divers et complexe de ses fils, c’est de la diversité même et de la complexité, voire de la contrariété, de leurs tendances, que se compose l’unité morale, le visage et l’âme d’une nation” (Bédier, “Quelle doit être notre attitude à l’égard de l’Allemagne d’après les intellectuels français?”).  50. “L’amour de la patrie nous rapproche, toi et moi” (Daudet, “Joseph Bédier”). Daudet wrote favorably of Bédier when he retired from the Collège de France (“La retraite de Joseph Bédier,” 26 December 1936) (DAS, RF 51. 280, f. 11).  51. Letter from Bédier to Barrès, 8 June 1914 (Corbellari, Correspondance no. 225), in which Bédier references his desire to speak about a “certain projet, qui n’est pas indigne, peut-être, de vous être exposé.” On their correspondence more broadly: Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 430–31; Callu and Germain.  52. On Jeanne d’Arc: Barrès, Autour de Jeanne d’Arc; Gildea 160–61; Emery and Morowitz 24–25; Bédier had high praise for Barrès’s article “L’hommage national à Jeanne d’Arc” (letter to Barrès, 3 June 1916 [Corbellari, Correspondance no. 246]); De Mahy also celebrated her (“A propos”); during the German Occupation, collaborators invoked Jeanne to defend both France and the Occupation (Ory 252–58). On medieval cathedrals: Barrès, La grande pitié; Bédier’s friend Mâle implied that republicanism had destroyed Gothic art (L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle; Emery and Morowitz 106, 108), and focused on the cathedrals in his antiGerman critiques (L’art allemand).  53. Scènes et doctrines 87 (also in L’appel au soldat).  54. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 403–5; Tharaud, Le fauteuil 60. Barrès meditates on the Légendes épiques in his notes for 1913 (Mes cahiers 10: 188–90).  55. Barrès, Les traits éternels 74n; letters from Bédier to Barrès, 5 October 1916, 1 January 1917, 13 March 1923 (Corbellari, Correspondance nos. 247, 252, 279). Bédier also provided Barrès with information on medieval Lorrain history (letter dated 3 June 1916 [Corbellari, Correspondance no. 246]).  56. “Les chansons de geste, les croisades, tout le jeune âge de la France regorgent d’innombrables faits accomplis par nos chevaliers et par la sancta plebs Dei qui devancent, annoncent les exploits mis à l’ordre de nos armées en 1916” (Barrès, Les traits éternels 32).  57. “Je ne dirai jamais assez ce que je dois à M. Joseph Bédier, l’éminent maître dont la science et délicatesse m’aidaient à comprendre la réalité héroïque d’aujourd’hui comme la légende épique d’autrefois” (Barrès, Les diverses familles 312).  58. “Un chef est sans force, une troupe est sans force s’il ne s’établit du chef à la troupe et de la troupe au chef un courant double et continu de pensées et de sentiments bien accordés . . . A son insu [de Roland], à leur insu [ses compagnons], il

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incarne leur volonté profonde. . . . A Roncevaux, son privilège de chef, de héros, de saint est seulement de voir au-delà, d’apercevoir d’emblée l’œuvre comme nécessairement accomplie, la victoire comme nécessairement remportée” (Bédier, Roland à Roncevaux 18–19; contrast with Légendes épiques 3:439).  59. Bédier, L’effort français 323. He also evokes Jeanne d’Arc as a model of chivalric purity, echoing Barrès (25, 139, 88, 187).  60. “Par eux [officiers des colonies] nos soldats s’étaient reliés aux ancêtres, s’étaient reconnus avec ravissement comme les petits-fils et les arrière-descendants de soldats disciplinés; grâce à eux, ils retrouvaient intact, fidèlement gardé, leur propre patrimoine, le dépôt des vertus guerrières de leur race” (Bédier, L’effort français 24–25).  61. Letter from Barrès to Bédier (cited in Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 430–31); Barrès publicly praised Bédier’s candidacy in L’Echo de Paris (CFB, liasse 114). See also Tharaud, Le fauteuil 37–38, 54; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 425–48, 477; Nykrog 287–90.  62. Barthou 54.  63. Le radical published a flattering account (4 November 1921), and La conference au village requested an article on “L’intelligence, capital national” for its unionist readers (2 July 1920; CFB, liasse 112); obituary in Le populaire (Desrousseaux).  64. In and around 1927, Bédier served on a literary committee (Sequena, recommending French books to foreign readers) with Jacques Bainville, codirector of the Action Française and elected to the Académie Française in 1935 (letter from Bédier to André Monglond, 16 January 1927 [Corbellari, Correspondance no. 294]).  65. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 480–82; Weber, Action française 412–13.  66. “Il m’a parlé de votre visite [celle de Maurras] et m’a offert le gros crayon bleu que vous avez oublié sur sa table. Je lui ai demandé si l’occasion se présentait, si je pouvais vous le dire [qu’il a voté pour vous], il m’a répondu: parfaitement” (printed below Daudet, “Joseph Bédier”).  67. “Sur le plan patriotique, je suis avec eux. . . . Au moins avec ceux-là, on respire l’air de la patrie” (Rocher).  68. Maurras, “Joseph Bédier.”  69. Brasillach (republished in 1944, as Brasillach was being tried for Nazi collaboration); Bourgin, “Joseph Bédier” 242; similarly laudatory notices in L’Intransigeant (which also published an earlier interview with Bédier: Saint-Prix), Candide, and Gringoire. Morand used Bédier’s Roland as the basis for his xenophobic and anti-Semitic novel France la doulce (1934).  70. Foucque, Au long de la vie 255–82; Barrès himself appreciated Leconte de Lisle (Mes cahiers 1:241, 3:55–56; De Mulder 47, 58, 62, 97, 214, 334).  71. “Je considère qu’on ne peut se dispenser quand on est traditionaliste, quand on est soumis à la loi de continuité, de prendre les choses dans l’état où on les trouve” (Barrès, Mes cahiers 3:175–76); Carroll; Digeon 403–34.

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 72. “Il est bon, en France comme ailleurs, d’occuper une place dans la hiérarchie régulière” (letter to Gaston Paris, 11 June 1891) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 346); also Lot, Joseph Bédier 39; Vinaver, Hommage 6–7, 30; Bourgin, “Joseph Bédier” 242.  73. Blanchard; Wardhaugh.  74. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 423; Solterer argues for a similar combination of paradoxical affiliations for Gustave Cohen.  75. Adolphe Bédier 9; Marius Leblond noted wistfully that the Bédiers had dropped their title “Ménézouern” (Les îles sœurs 72n1). Corbellari calls Adolphe’s account the family’s “mythe fondateur” (Joseph Bédier 8), Christophe Bédier its “hagiographie” (26): official documents confirm none of these details.  76. E.g., letter to Georges Mareschal de Bièvre (reproduced in Ryckebusch 181); Bédier, “Lettre” (both dated October 1920); Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 6–11 (on the general character of Adolphe’s book).  77. Adolphe Bédier 36. Marius Leblond claimed to have read some of the family papers of Joseph Bédier’s grandparents (Les îles sœurs 137–38).  78. Adolphe Bédier, on chivalry (46, 57, 63, 64, 68, 75, 90–91), on royalism (26, 29, 39, 45, 48–49). Adolphe reports that his father considered Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers an apt family portrait (18).  79. Adolphe Bédier 12–13, 15, 16, 24, 39, 50. Bédier himself gave a “classist” explanation for his 1905 vote for the aged Armand Fallières “je méprise cet arriviste de Doumer” [I despise this upstart Doumer] (BVC, ff. 28–29). Bédier reputedly maintained an aristocratic disdain for money throughout his life (anecdotes in Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 503), an attitude recommended by his father (who refuses to even name a great-uncle who had become a “commerçant, négociant, c’est-à-dire malhonnête homme” [merchant, shopkeeper, that is to say a dishonest man] (12) (also 37, 67, 77–78). The Leblonds attribute these same antimercantile qualities to Leconte de Lisle (Leconte de Lisle 205). Léon Gautier, in La Chevalerie (1884), similarly opposed chivalry to mercantile values.  80. Interview with Christophe Bédier (25 July 2004); letter to Joseph Texte, 21 January 1888 (Une amitié 77).  81. Champion 680; Cohen, Ceux que j’ai connus 164; Fidus 343–44; Hazard; Nykrog 299–300. Like his ancestors, Bédier learned the arts of fencing (letter to Gaston Paris, 27 December, 1887) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 293).  82. Combeau 369–70; Lycée de Saint-Denis (1867–68, 1870–71, 1871–72).  83. “Une grande école de patriotisme dans laquelle nous enseignons à aimer la France” (cited in Combeau 368), echoing almost exactly a speech from a decade earlier (Lycée de Saint-Denis [1870–71] 8–9); the theme remains prominent decades later (Lycée de Saint-Denis [1908] 10–26).  84. “L’honneur de notre pays fut toujours de prendre la défense du faible contre le fort” (Lycée de Saint-Denis [1901] 19).  85. “Culte chevaleresque de l’honneur”; “Vieille France” (Lycée de Saint-Denis

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[1921] 28). Chivalry, like medievalism in general, could take on negative connotations: Réunion’s Catholic newspaper criticized De Mahy for his “chivalric” rhetoric when he supported the application of a military service law to the colonies (La vérité, 19 August 1887). On “eternal genius” of colonialism: Lycée de Saint-Denis (1921) 35.  86. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1879–80) 22.  87. Garros: “J’étais Créole . . . j’étais donc plus prêt que d’autres à faire la guerre sans haine” (Leblond, “Île de la Réunion” 8); “un chevalier du Moyen Age que l’on défie dans un tournoi” (Leguen 195). Barquissau entitled a collection of eighteenth-century colonial portraits Les chevaliers des Isles. Colonial chivalry of course had broader currency: Albert Camus based his notion of Mediterranean unity on medieval chivalric models (Lorcin 325–26).  88. Lycée de Saint-Denis (Réunion): Cahier d’honneur (1876–78), pp. 48–49, 58–60, 78–81, 100–1 (ADR T410). Coincidentally, Édouard Bédier signs the first essay in the collection and Joseph the last.  89. “Vous qui demain serez l’élite, faites-vous les chevaliers de toutes les nobles causes. . . . [Une] noble lignée française . . . vous lègue son rôle et sa primauté dans la mer des Indes, montrez-vous en dignes. Dirons-nous: ‘Le sang ne peut pas mentir?’ Il peut mentir. Il dépend de vous qu’il ne mente pas” (Barquissau, “De la formation” 43–45).  90. Garsault, fig. XVII. The lycée had accepted children of color since its founding in the early nineteenth century.  91. “Militia est vita: la vie est une chevalerie” (CFB, liasse 11).  92. “Il y a des sangs qui ne mentent jamais” (Adolphe Bédier 51).  93. Bissette 361; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 128–39; Leblond, L’île enchantée 30, “La Réunion et son musée.” Vergès posits that the Lebonds reject the notion of class (Monsters and Revolutionaries 109); just as likely, they racialized it (Mathieu 100; Prabhu 37–39, 42).  94. “Notre famille a subi son contact, par malheur, et, dans les généalogies que je vous ai données, il y a bien un ou deux noms de paletots gris: ils vous seront désignés par le silence que je garderai sur eux et vous ne les considérerez jamais comme parents” (Adolphe Bédier 16). Adolphe’s attitude illustrates clearly the complexities of white racial identity in the colonies (cf. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge 26–40).  95. “Nous avons reçu dans notre sang une si vieille tradition d’honneur qu’il s’y conforma sans effort, par nature et presque sans mérite” (Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 48).  96. “Tu as gardé pur notre vieux nom” (ibid. 51).  97. “Un Bourbonnais blond aux yeux bleus . . . d’une race . . . préservée de tout mélange” (conversation reported in Cohen, “Joseph Bédier, administrateur”; different versions in “Joseph Bédier (1864–1938)” and Ceux que j’ai connus 155 [see more below and chapter 4]).

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 98. Fidus 343–44; Bourgin, “Joseph Bédier” 241; Tharaud, Le fauteuil 8; Roques, “Allocation.”  99. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 119–20; Barquissau, “Joseph Bédier” 70–71. 100. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 121. 101. Adolphe Bédier 22; Mauduit-Bédier 2. 102. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1894) 20, 31. 103. “Soutenu seulement par le cri de vaillance: ‘Mont joie Saint-Denis” (Lycée de Saint-Denis [1924] 19). 104. Bédier, Chanson de Roland, l. 973 (town of Saint-Denis), l. 2347 (hair of Saint Denis). 105. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1911) 25. 106. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1920) 24–26, (1921) 24 (citation), (1922) 28. 107. “Gesta Dei per Francos. Qu’on traduise ‘La France soldat de Dieu’ ou ‘la France soldat de l’Idée’ c’est la même chose. C’est le résumé de notre passé, c’est l’annonce de notre avenir” (Foucque in Lycée de Saint-Denis [1920] 24). 108. “J’aime ces vieux créoles, leur goût du risque et de l’aventure, la façon dont ils passent de la mollesse à l’énergie, leur fierté, le sentiment raffiné qu’ils ont de l’honneur, leur chevalerie. Je leur ai souvent demandé la leçon de l’exemple. Si je suis devenu un historien de la France de jadis, c’est que j’ai goûté leur grand sens de la tradition française, de l’ordre français, leur amour enivré de la mèrepatrie. C’est à leur imitation que j’ai surtout essayé de conformer ma vie” (Bédier, “Lettre”). 109. “Je comprends que ce n’est pas à moi seul ni à moi principalement que vont ces marques de sympathie, mais au nom que je porte, à mon père et à ma mère, à celui qui fut comme ‘mon plus que père’ Du Tertre, à mon frère Édouard, qui a bien servi la colonie, et à la double lignée de gens d’honneur de qui je descends” (Bédier, “Lettre”). 110. Berg; Cazemage; Foucque, “Apport” 132–34, “Inauguration”; Fournier; Taboulet and D’ Esme. 111. Leblond, La Réunion et Paris 53, “Il faut étudier l’art noir” (La vie, July 1922, cited in Fournier 218); Marius Leblond, “A la mémoire” (597). On the museum, see chapter 6 and Afterword. 112. Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 37, 39, 63, La France devant l’Europe 154– 62, 335–39. 113. “Qui rappelle le plus la cour d’amour du Moyen Age” (Lebond, L’île enchantée 140); a commonplace repeated elsewhere (e.g., Camus-Clavier 11). 114. Marius Leblond, Redressement 15–41, 271. 115. “Chevalerie dans l’humanisme, chevalerie dans le patriotisme, chevalerie dans la littérature et dans l’art, chevalerie dans l’amitié, chevalerie dans l’amour fécond, chevalerie en tous les gestes et pensées. C’est elle qui supprimera l’antinomie puérile entre l’aristocratie et la démocratie. La renaissance de la Chevalerie

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s’impose comme le grand opéra de la culture française auprès de quoi les Walkyrie sont des éclairs de préhistoire” (Marius Leblond, La paix française 2–3). Gustave Cohen published the same year La grande clarté du Moyen-Age (Paris: Gallimard, 1945). 116. Marius Lebond, L’empire 219, 230. 117. “Action par tous les moyens en faveur d’un patriotisme enthousiaste et chevaleresque” (ANF, 355 AP/55, Fonds Madelin, Dossier Leblond, Curriculum). 118. Fournier 49, 53–56, 109–11, 126, 148, 252. 119. Leblond, “Prémisses du redressement,” La vie (April 1941); “Commandement de la France aux Français,” La vie ( July 1941); “L’heure de sagesse et de science,” La vie ( January 1942); Ory 255–58, 268–69, 295–96. Both Réunionnais deputies, Gasparin and Brunet, voted full powers to Pétain in 1940 (Vivier). 120. Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 25–40, 52–71 (postslavery), 72–122 (postcolony). 121. “Joseph Bédier, qui était né à la Réunion, comme tant d’autres écrivains, recevait souvent chez lui des personnages au teint plus ou moins foncé, originaires de l’ancienne île de Bourbon. Sa concierge . . . était si bien habituée à ces visites qu’elle indiquait l’étage du maître avant même qu’on le lui demandât” (“Les amis”). 122. “A l’exception d’un infiniment petit nombre de familles européennes ou à peu près, toutes celles qui habitent Bourbon et qui se disent d’origine blanche descendent en ligne maternelle des Malgaches qui sont parfaitement cuivrés ou des Indiens qui sont parfaitement noirs. Les blancs de l’île Bourbon sont donc des métis, des sang-mêlés, des béqués, café au lait, comme on les appelle dans le langage créole des Antilles” (Bissette 355–57). Discussion of Bissette in Mercer Cook; Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 30–52; Bongie, Islands and Exiles 262–341; Pâme. 123. The supposed leader of the rebellion, Louis Houat, went on to publish the first non-European French novel, Les Marrons (1844), a romance of racial reconciliation through republican ideals (Sam-Long, Le roman de marronage; Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 37–52). Documents related to Houat’s trial: ADR, Inv. 21212–57–2/14. 124. Fuma, “L’esclavage et le métissage.” 125. E.g., Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Suite des voeux d’un solitaire (Œuvres complètes 11:227); Billiard 456–57; Le journal de Marguerite (1858) 229 (cited in Nicole 220); Duval 252. 126. “L’on ne dit pas que son premier-né ait eu la peau moins blanche qu’elle” (Contes 126); Marimoutou, “Littérature” 132–38. 127. Légendes épiques 3:269–70. 128. “Bien sûr, il y a des parents métis. Les ancêtres racistes les faisaient disparaître. . . . Les yeux bleus ont sauté une génération [dans ma famille]” (June 2003).

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129. “Il n’est pas mauvais de détruire une légende que certains voyageurs ont accréditée à la légère, celle du métissage à l’origine de la colonisation de l’île” (Barquissau, “Esquisse” 43). 130. Camille Jacob de Cordemoy; Palant. Some colonial administrators claimed to avoid racial categories in order to alleviate social divisions, and they were frequently unable to comply with metropolitan requests for “colonial” data (Duval 252n1; ADR 8M106). 131. Social dangers: Leblond, L’île enchantée 32–34; “La rivalité” 91, 110, 113; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 111–12 (he states categorically that the first settlers remained without their “Eve” for two years, and that seven French women were sufficient to establish the French population). Disappearing white race: Leblond, “La Réunion et son Musée,” “Introduction” 6, “Île de la Réunion” 16; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 165; Fournier 49–52; Prabhu 37–38; Ganiage 37, 351 (on population numbers, estimating a 20 percent white population in 1870, 15 percent in 1911). 132. Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 84, 109–12. 133. Ibid. 306n187. They claimed to have drawn the names from their respective beloveds, Marie and Henriette, one of whom was blond (Cazemage, “La vie” 96). Their vision of a “blond” Réunion extended to fauna: they claimed the sun and marine atmosphere made most animal species blonder than their counterparts elsewhere (L’île enchantée 15n1). 134. Leblond, “Au Public”; “Les pays d’ancienne Gaule”; La France devant l’Europe 180–88. 135. Leblond, Vercingétorix 189; Vie de Vercingétorix. The Leblonds dedicated the work to Hanotaux; it garnered praise from Léon Daudet (Taboulet and D’Esme 127) and won a prize from the Académie Française. Les martyrs won the Grand Prix Laserre in 1932 (from a commission that included Bédier). 136. Leblond, “Paul Sérusier,” La vie, 15 February 1939 (cited in Fournier 225). 137. Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 114 (according to him, 80 percent of French immigrants came from Brittany; Bourde de la Rogerie); Marius elevates Réunionnais Creole high above the “stammerings” of the Antilles and other Creoles (147). In the preface to Zézère, the Leblonds compare Réunionnais Creole to the language of Ronsard (ix); their own writing reveals a “whitewashed” Creole that supports white superiority (Delacroix). 138. Leblond, Zézère x; Leconte de Lisle 315. 139. “Ils étaient horrifiés de le voir jeter les os de sa côtelette par-dessus son épaule sur le parquet; l’acajou lustre des joues n’y étaient pour rien” (Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 126); similar observations on racial harmony in Leblond, “Rivalité des races” 94–95, “Race inférieure”; Garsault 164–65; Olivier, Exposition 5.2:1007. 140. Stereotyped groups: Leblond, Zézère ix–x; Sortilèges i–ii. Separate but fraternal: Leblond, “Rivalité des races” 116; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 120–24,

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143–46. They injected sarcasm and disdain into their descriptions of local elections, which brought the disparate races into closer contact (e.g., Kermesse 75, Sarabande 63). 141. General discussion in Nicole 46–49; Prabhu on the ambiguity created by the simultaneous desire for cross-cultural contact and the maintenance of white superiority (38–39). 142. “Vous ne savez pas, mon ami . . . ce que c’est que d’être un Bourbonnais blond aux yeux bleus. C’est l’indice de pureté d’une race . . . qui s’est en ces terres lointaines, préservée de tout mélange” (Cohen, “Joseph Bédier, administrateur”). 143. “Tradition continue,” “pureté de race, sans aucune mésalliance” (Cohen, “Joseph Bédier [1864–1938]” 3; also in Ceux que j’ai connus 155). The hero of the Lebond’s Le miracle de la Race expresses the same ideal: “our race, transplanted, maintains itself miraculously pure” [notre race, transplantée, se garde, elle, miraculeusement pure] (232). 144. Cohen, Ceux que j’ai connus 155; Marius Leblond claims that Réunionnais assiduously observed such subtleties of provincial origins (Les îles sœurs 115). Contemporary migrants also speak of the complexities of race in diaspora (including “white”) (Bertile et al. 79, 212; Tal 82; Albert Weber 187–207, 410; Labache). 145. “Je suis un breton de l’île Bourbon—ceci vous étonne? C’est pourtant une véridique histoire” (Lefèvre). Bédier can still be cited as a paragon of Breton racialism (“Conférence du Centre Généalogique de Bourbon,” Le journal de l’île de la Réunion, 18 August 2001). 146. “Don’t make the creole patois your habitual language: born of slavery, it keeps its traces; it corrupts the spirit of those who want to be, who must be, the elite. Good for a tale, it degrades a conversation. Remember, in this and all other things, that a true creole is above all a Frenchman” [Ne faites pas du patois créole votre langue habituelle; né de l’esclavage, il en garde la trace; il corrompt l’esprit de ceux qui veulent, qui doivent être l’élite. Bon pour un conte, il dégrade une conversation. Souvenez-vous, là comme ailleurs, que le vrai créole est avant tout un Français] (Barquissau, “De la formation” 44). Another educator censured “le français négrifié” (Lycée de Saint-Denis [1910] 15, cited in Combeau 369; proper speech here touches the heart of “chivalry,” “nationality,” and “purity” [15, 18–19, 27–28]; see also ADR 4111.63.1, cited in Lucas, “Quels ensiegnements?” 127). Marius Leblond notes that Creole was more common than French in school corridors (Les îles sœurs 152–55). 147. Angenot 168–72, 971. 148. “It was seen as worse than provincial” [c’était vu comme pire que la province] (Christopher Bédier, remembering an aunt) (interview, 25 July 2004); contemporary migrants frequently report negative reactions to their “colored accent” (Albert Weber 239). 149. E.g., “Causerie du Franc-Colon,” Le Salazien et Moniteur (23 August 1887).

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The Leblonds considered “regional literature” inferior to “colonial literature” because it resisted Paris rather than celebrating the “Grande France” that included Paris (Leblond, Après l’exotisme 12; also Hardy, Les colonies 233; Randau, “L’écrivain colonial”). 150. “Une faculté naturelle d’imitation qu’ils partagent d’ailleurs avec les nègres” (Baudelaire 44). The Leblonds blame this prejudice partly on Parny, partly on Lacaussade (Leconte de Lisle 319, 320n3). Popular geographical publications presented “white creoles” like a separate race (e.g., À travers le monde 12 [1906]: 187); cf. Miller 94–104; Dubois 34–35. 151. “Je viens de lire avec charme et émotion votre fine étude sur Bourbon au temps de l’esclavage. Elle m’a rappelé bien des souvenirs: de mon temps, les mœurs n’avaient guère changé. Je revois très bien, parmi les figures chères de mon enfance, un vieil affranchi, Richard, resté à la maison, et ma vieille nénaine [sic], Olympe, qui avait été, comme esclave, la nourrice de mon père, et une certaine page de votre étude m’a rappelé une cafrine aux dents limées, Rita, qui, après vingt ans de domesticité chez nous, reçut le même jour, au cours d’une maladie, les sacrements du baptême, de la pénitence, de l’Eucharistie, du mariage et de l’Extrême-onction” (reproduced in Ryckebusch 181). Marius Leblond describes, romantically, the social role of the nénène, emphasizing the folkloric stories told to children (Les îles sœurs 116–18). 152. Fidus 343–44 (a pseudonym, probably for André Chaumeix or Louis Gillet, both former students of Bédier and his eventual colleagues at the Académie Française [see Dunbar]). 153. “Un colon de pure race française” (Cohen, “Joseph Bédier, administrateur”); “sans l’ombre de métissage” ( Johannet). 154. Descriptions of Saint-Denis in the 1870s and 1880s: Buet (a metropolitan visitor), 56–94; Leal (a Maurician journalist), 191–98; Noufflard 189. Leal remarks on the opulence and cleanliness of the Rue de Paris (near Bédier’s house) (191–92). 155. Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 49; letter from Bédier to Georges Mareschal de Bièvre (8 October 1920) (reproduced in Ryckebusch 181); address book (CFB, liasse 114). 156. De Mahy’s “château”: Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 49; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 41; letter to Gaston Paris, dated 8 September 1888 (BNF, NAF MS 24431, ff. 318–19). Bédier penned many letters from Indre-sur-Loire. Eugénie Bizarelli: Vallier; Bédier also credited Brunetière with a role, and asked him to be a witness at the wedding (letter dated 1 September 1891, BNF, NAF MS 25030, f. 277v). 157. E.g., letters to Texte, June 1891, 4 July 1891, 15 April 1892 (Une amitié 171, 188, 194); letter to Gaston Paris, 3 September 1889 (BNF, NAF MS 24431, ff. 320–21); letter to Brunetière, 5 September 1889 (BNF, NAF MS 25030, f. 268bis v.).

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158. Family in letters: letters to Gaston Paris (31 January 1891, 2 October 1894, 9 October 1898; 2 August 1901) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, ff. 343v, 379v, 393–94, 408– 10); CFB, liasse [109]. Social contacts: Foucque in Dictionnaire biogaphique 2:87; Champdemerle in Bertile et al. 290 and Albert Weber 322. 159. Letters to Texte, October 1886, 20 August 1888, 15 November 1890, June 1891, 15 April 1892 (Une amitié 22, 103, 161, 171, 194); letter from Bédier’s mother referring to a family friend who reported that in Fribourg Bédier looked less like a creole than a German, 11 May 1891 (CFB, liasse [109]); Bédier, “Lettre.” 160. “Bichique-Club” lunches: Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 130; Barquissau, “Éloge” 19; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 225; Lacaze was also as a regular guest. Memorial committee: the president of the Republic, Gaston Doumergue, chaired the committee; members included Lacaze, Auguste Brunet, and the Leblonds (ANF, F21/ 4885/ dossier 13c). 161. “A Joseph Bédier, vieux créole” (Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 130); Hart, in an affectionate obituary, compares Bédier to a “gentleman-planter” [planteurgentilhomme] or “important lawyer” [grand avocat] of Saint-Denis. 162. Bourde de la Rogerie 313; also “Joseph Bédier,” Petit Marseillais. Numerous obituaries collected in: CFB, C–XII and DAS, RF 51.280. 163. E.g., 22 March 1887 (Une amitié 48); Bédier refers to Texte as “ma vieille cocotte” (1 July 1887, Une amitié 56). Bédier’s other close friend, Bernard Bouvier, also uses the nickname (20 Aug 1891, 31 May 1893, 9 Sept 1893, 15 Aug 1909) (CFB, liasses 107, 108). 164. Honoré; Armand; Neu-Altenheimer et al. (on “k” in Réunionnais Creole). 165. 7 October 1886 (Une amitié 25); Lucian Müller 2–3 (French edition published in 1882). 166. November 1887 (Une amitié 69). 167. Bédier refers to “reborn fears” [hantises renaissantes] associated with the return of “the old Makokote” (20 August 1888, Une amitié 103). 168. December 1886 (Une amitié 37). Bédier’s father made a similar choice, and imagined that his children would never experience the island’s “bonheur” [il n’est pas possible en Europe] (25). The theme of exile permeates creole poetry (Leconte de Lisle, “Le Départ” ll. 2, 19; “Pauvre moi” ll. 5–7) (in Issop-Banian). 169. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 12. Bédier’s mother and stepfather did visit him at least twice, in 1891 (for his wedding) and 1896 (Une amitié 182, 248; CFB, liasse [109]). 170. December 1886 (Une amitié 38); letter to Gaston Paris, 12 April 1888 (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 309). Bédier’s daughter, Marthe Mauduit-Bédier, places Bourbon and the Middle Ages in a quasisupernatural rivalry for possession of Bédier’s spirit (“captivated” by his studies, he resisted the “sortilèges” of his beloved island) (4). 171. 22 March 1887 (Une amitié 47).

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172. “Comme s’il eût fait le sacrifice de lui-même” (Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 50). More than fifty years later, Marius Leblond tells of meeting people in the mountains outside of Saint-Denis who remembered the “sacrifice” of “Joseph Bédier’s brother” (Les îles sœurs 72–73). 173. “Il se sentait invinciblement attiré vers notre petit pays auquel nous attachent des liens si multiples, si vieux et si vivaces, et que nul créole ne parvient jamais à oublier” (Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 50). 174. “Brodeur de cirage” (22 March 1887 [Une amitié 46]). 175. 1 and 31 July 1887 (Une amitié 56–57, 57–59). Bédier promises to drink a glass of coconut milk to Texte’s health; he notes that a letter will reach him even without the exact address (57). 176. Letter to Texte and Bouvier (August 1887) (Une amitié 61). 177. Lot, Joseph Bédier 41. This memory could also apply to 1870. 178. Letter to Texte, 1 August 1887; to Texte and Bouvier, August 1887 (Une amitié 58–59). 179. Le Créole, 16 and 24 August 1887; Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 50. 180. E.g., Le Créole (19 August 1887, 1 and 6 October 1887); L’indépendence coloniale (28 September 1887); Le Salazien et Moniteur (25 August 1887); La vérité (19, 21, and 24 August 1887); D. Barret on the politics of passenger service to Réunion. 181. Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 51; more strongly in “Lettre.” 182. November 1887 (Une amitié 68). 183. 3 December 1887 (Ibid. 73). The Leblonds attribute a similar painful regret to Leconte de Lisle (Leconte de Lisle 323–26). 184. 21 January 1888 (Une amitié 77); Texte shares Bédier’s sadness with Mâle (27 January 1888, Une amitié 82); Bédier’s melancholy lingers into the fall (Une amitié 112). Parny expressed the same desire for a simplified return: “Would that it had pleased God that I never left my little rock of Bourbon” [Plût à Dieu que je n’eusse jamais quitté mon rocher de Bourbon] (cited in Barquissau, Chevaliers 93). 185. 3 December 1887 (Une amitié 74, 76). 186. Christophe Bédier intuits the same conclusion: “he seeks in his work a lost permanence; he transposes the correctness, purity lost elsewhere to the Middle Ages . . . the ideal is broken, he finds it again, reconstitutes it elsewhere, in the past” [“il recherche dans son travail une permanence perdue,” “il retranspose la droiture, la pureté perdues ailleurs, au moyen âge. . . . l’idéal est brisé, il le retrouve, le reconstitue ailleurs, dans le passé”] (interview, 25 July 2004). 187. Barquissau, Une colonie 75. Similar comments in Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 129; Hart; Billiard 471, 485. 188. “Des fougères bizarres de l’île Bourbon” (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 294). 189. Monod, Exposition 2:179; Garsault 298–99; Olivier, Exposition 5.2:1015; Hoarau 107.

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190. Chambers; Patty. 191. Emery and Morowitz 63. 192. Texte: 8 September 1886 (Une amitié 17). Bédier: 20 August 1888 (ibid. 105). 193. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 47n23. 194. Bédier, “L’art religieux” 141. 195. Vergès suggests that melancholy remains characteristic of Réunionnais discourse (“Island of Wandering Souls” 165); also Leblond, L’île enchantée 140. 196. Michelet, Histoire de France 8:82. 197. Leblond, “Sur Albert Dürer”; they also appreciate Dürer as a collector of indigenous arts. 198. Letter to Gaston Paris, 26 February 1888 (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 303v); he had written earlier that he didn’t care where he lived if he couldn’t live on Bourbon (27 December 1887, f. 294v). 199. Freud 375–77. 200. Letter to Gaston Paris, 27 December 1887 (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 294v). 201. “J’ai grandi, j’ai passé toute mon adolescence dans une de nos plus vieilles colonies. . . . je suis revenue vers le sol de la mère patrie et je m’y suis enraciné à nouveau, mais toujours je reste fidèle à mon île lointaine, et toujours je la regrette” (speech in San Francisco) (CFB, liasse 106, p. 2). 202. Estèbe; Hermann; Senex; CFB, liasses 112, 113, 114. 203. “Et j’entends . . . de chères voix lointaines: elles me viennent de mon pays, noble entre les nobles terres de douce France, ma petite île Bourbon, sans cesse tendue vers la mère-patrie, et si éprise d’amour d’elle qu’elle enivre tous ses enfants de cet amour . . .” (Bédier, Discours 6–7). 204. “Je garde entre les pages d’un vieux livre une feuille de fougère d’or cueillie dans une ravine de Cilaos . . . une gouttelette du soleil de Bourbon y est enclose. Quarante ans ont passé, la poussière d’or ne s’est pas ternie, ainsi de mon cœur” (Bédier, cited in Senex). More than a hundred years later, dried flowers sent from Bourbon survived in Bédier’s family letters (CFB, liasse [109]; December 2001): for me, they evoke the power and fragility of ephemeral gestures, the slippage of private thought into public record. 205. Funds collected by Bédier’s cousin and childhood friend Maurice des Rieux, with the assistance of his classmate Gabriel Guist’hau (Bédier, “Lettre”). Many visitors comment on the impressive desk (Cohen, Ceux que j’ai connus 161; Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 130; Hazard; Artus) (further discussion in chapter 4). 206. Bédier, “Lettre.” 207. “C’est notre destin d’essaimer et de courir au loin des fortunes diverses; mais des ondes magnétiques traversent les terres et les mers et nous relient les uns aux autres par les liens d’une mystérieuse télépathie” (“Discours”); Champdemerle reminisces about Bédier’s speech in Bertile et al. (292).

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208. Bédier’s waves evoke radio, in use on Réunion since the mid–1920s (Le mémorial 5:292–301); they also magically circumvent Réunion’s actual dependence on cable networks controlled by Britain for all communications with France (Allain, “Strategic Independence”). 209. E.g., essays and images in Nouvel-Kammerer. 210. Leblond, “La Réunion et son Musée.” Cf. Léon Garnier: “Peuples who don’t emigrate are like hives that don’t swarm; they are dead nations” [Les peuples qui n’émigrent pas sont semblables aux ruches qui n’essaiment pas; ce sont des nations mortes], cited in Girerd v. 211. Parny, Édouard Hervé, Leconte de Lisle, Bédier, and Lacaze. Christophe Bédier has traced Bédier’s genealogical relations with four Academicians — as many in the family as from the island: Racine (1673), Parny (1803), Leconte de Lisle (1886), and Jacques de Lacretelle (1936) (AAF, Dossier Bédier). 212. “Puissions-nous, à son exemple [de Lacaze], ceux qui comme moi ne reverront jamais les rivages chéris, et vous les jeunes qui espérez les revoir, maintenir en leur intégrité première, pour le service de la France, les traditions de chez nous, et puissent ceux qui sont restés là-bas entendre nos voix d’amis, nos voix nostalgiques, et accueillir les promesses de ferme et tendre fidélité qu’adressent à notre île maternelle ses fils qui l’ont quittée et qui l’aiment toujours” (Bédier, “Discours” 1937). 213. “Véritable France, plus France que celle dont ils étaient partis” (ibid.); Foucque also underscores this point (“L’île”; “Joseph Bédier”). 214. “Toutes mes impressions d’enfance, toutes mes sensations de la première jeunesse restent imprégnées des souvenirs, des paysages, des horizons de là-bas . . . Je suis resté créole de cœur, et ne songe jamais sans nostalgie à cette terre où subsistent, parmi 20,000 blancs aujourd’hui, tant de nos vieilles mœurs, tant de nos coutumes aimables d’autrefois, derrière des récifs de corail . . .” (Sanvoisin). According to the census figures of 1921 (Barquissau, “Esquisse” 80), Bédier’s estimate places the white population at about 9 percent. 215. Le Goffic 255, 256, 253–54. Le Goffic himself joined the Académie in 1930 and contributed to Bédier’s Revue de France (1931); he had also founded a literary revue with Barrès in 1886 (Les chroniques). 216. Grappe 271, 272–73, 274; others also reach this conclusion: Beaume; Fidus 343; “La vie studieuse.” 217. Tharaud, Le fauteuil 20. Other memorialists assess Bédier’s creole identity in similar terms: Chaumeix; Lefranc; J. L., “Monsieur Joseph Bédier”; “Mort”; Nys; Prévost; “La vie studieuse.” 218. Letter to Texte, 20 August 1888 (Une amitié 105); letters to Gaston Paris, 16 October 1893, 10 October 1900 (BNF, NAF 24431, ff. 376–77, 406); letter to Mâle, 14 April [no year] (BIF, MS 7580, ff. 29–30); Lot, Joseph Bédier 35–36.

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219. As administrator of the Collège, Bédier followed in the footsteps of both Gaston Paris and Renan. His anniversary speeches constitute “a single and vibrant homage to Paris” (Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 497). 220. “Paris, c’est un air qu’on respire, si vivifiant que l’homme qui s’y trouve soudainement plongé, de quelque métier qu’il soit, sent se précipiter, joyeux, le rythme de sa vie. Paris, c’est pour chacun l’école de toute modestie, car nul n’en peut parcourir les rues qui ne se connaisse le contemporain de tout ce qu’il y eut de grand dans notre pays et qui n’apprenne par là-même à mesurer sa propre petitesse. Mais, plus particulièrement, pour un homme de bibliothèque ou de laboratoire, Paris, c’est l’invitation salutaire de s’arracher à lui-même et à l’orgueil de sa tour d’ivoire pour enrichir, non pas sa spécialité technique, mais son âme, pour échapper précisément au péril de n’être qu’un spécialiste, donc un demi-savant. Paris, c’est l’entrée en liaison avec toutes les façons élevées de comprendre la vie” (Bédier, “Le quatrième centenaire” 368). The Leblonds describe a similar impression of temporal contrast upon their own arrival in Paris: “There can be no more beautiful emotion than that of contemplating, in the middle of a completely contemporary city, the great monuments of our history that tell us the ancient value of our race” [Il ne peut y avoir de plus belle émotion que celle de contempler, au milieu d’une ville toute contemporaine, les grands monuments de notre histoire qui nous disent l’antique valeur de notre race] (La Réunion et Paris 18). Their novel En France (Prix Goncourt 1909) traces the culture shock of migrant creoles like themselves and Bédier: the hero Claude Mavel moves from disgust with the city (En France 26–28) to enamored devotion (En France 111, Jardins de Paris 452–58). cf. the parallel, yet opposite, decription by Édouard Glissant (Soleil 15, 67, 82). 221. Cf. Aldrich, Vestiges 21–73; Emery and Morowitz; Robert Morrissey 294–97. 222. Bédier, “Lettre.” 223. “Il faut dire que je me plais toujours à la vie de province, que je n’aime de Paris que vos cours, et que je ne souhaite rien de plus pour l’année prochaine, à mon retour en France, que d’aller en province” (27 December 1887) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 294v). A year earlier, Bédier expressed to Texte the conviction that the provinces would soon “take him” (December 1886) (Une amitié 37). Only the prospect of a “lowly” teaching job made him prefer Paris (26 February 1888) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 303v). 224. Letter to Texte, 20 August 1888 (Une amitié 105). 225. “Ce qui n’est plus ne fut jamais” (Lot, Joseph Bédier 30); also Tharaud, Le fauteuil 7 (“Le passé est, pour moi, comme s’il n’avait jamais existé”), 19. The editors of Le mémorial consider these metropolitan citations “ridiculous” (5:308). 226. Horace, Epistle 1.11, l. 27; citations in Barquissau, “Joseph Bédier” 73; CFB, liasse 106; Corbellari, Correspondance nos. 55, 163, 239, 275, 284, 297, 303; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 461.

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227. “Je ne sais trop le sens mélancolique et parfois douloureux” (speech in CFB, liasse 106). 228. Photo now in the private collection of Adrien Bédier: cited in Barquissau, “Joseph Bédier” 73; Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 130; Le mémorial 5:308 (with the comment: “Quelles lettres de noblesse pour notre langue créole!”); “Joseph Bédier est mort!” Barquissau states that this translation probably represents the only time the “purist” used Creole. Despite Bédier’s admiration of Parisian French, however, he surely used Creole more often than Barquissau would admit (anecdotes in Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 149). Others also adopted the proverb as an emblem of creole identity: it appears as the motto of a diaspora newspaper that began publishing in 1931: “Courir au dela des mers c’est changer de climat mais sans changer de coeur” (La vigie de l’île Bourbon, cited in Técher and Serviable 103); La revue littéraire featured a similar motto: “Coeur créole, âme française” (cited in Técher and Serviable 102). 229. Course notes (CFB, liasse 56); speeches in the United States (CFB, liasse 106); also Bédier, “Les commencemens” 873, Les crimes allemands 38. In 1979, Dr. A. Role uses this same reference, along with Bédier’s name, to defend Réunion’s attachment to France and criticize separatist politics (see chapter 6). 230. Bizer. 231. Leblonds: “L’éloignement entretient un sentiment général d’être abandonné mais celui-ci ne tourne pas à l’amertume, simplement à une mélancolie persifleuse qui tient lieu de philosophie” [Distance involves a general feeling of being abandoned but this does not turn into bitterness, simply into a lighthearted melancholy that serves as a philosophy] (L’île enchantée 140). 4. Island Philology

  1. Espósito; Fleischman; Warren, “Post-philology” 29–35.   2. Boeckh 10–11 (cited in Gossman, Between 278).   3. Skepticism of “critical method”: Bédier, Fabliaux, appendix (1st ed. only); problems also noted in Roman de Tristan par Thomas (1:vi). Full critique: “la notion de l’authentique et du primitif se brouille” (Bédier, Commentaires 83). Elsewhere, Bédier attacked the family metaphor itself: one cannot identify brothers if one of them wears makeup and a disguise (“La tradition” 339). At the same time, he maintained official allegiance to the critical method: (“La société”; letter to Roques, 28 June 1928 [BIF, MS 6142, ff. 176–76v]).   4. Bédier, Le lai, “La tradition manuscrite”; Ridoux 389–425; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 505–59. Editorial methods remain a subject of sometimes intense debate (Speer; Kay, “The New Philology”).   5. Bédier, Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:35–36, Le lai xxxviii, xlii, Commentaires 264.

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  6. On Renan: Digeon 403–50; Sternhell, “The Political Culture.” Of Bédier’s circle, Barrès (Ernest Renan; Mes cahiers, passim) and the Leblonds (“Chronique” 306) claimed Renan’s influence with particular clarity.   7. Renan, “Discours” 842–47. Renan had alluded to the evils of emigration already in 1870 (Réforme 121).   8. On Renan: Bédier, “Les Lais” 839, “Le quatrième centenaire” 368, “Le moyen âge” 9, CFB, liasses 7bis, 88, 94, 105; Grappe 273–86; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 18–23. Bédier, Renan, and Gaston Paris all have virtually the same epitaph: “veritatem dilexit” (Renan); “veritatem dilexit, auxit, honoravit” (Bédier); “Il a aimé la vérité, cru en elle, travaillé à la découvrir” (Paris, in Bähler, Gaston Paris 149–50). Renan’s youthful writings: Corbellari, Correspondance no. 79, 277; Renan, “Notes.”   9. Renan, L’avenir 5, 126–53, 202–27.  10. “Considère que la vie scientifique est chose sérieuse et sainte, et la seule nécessaire; et c’est en ce sens que Renan a écrit à la première page de son plus beau livre cette parole de l’Evangile: ‘Marthe, Marthe, une seule chose est nécessaire’ ” (letter to Gaston Paris, 30 May 1893) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, ff. 368–69); Bédier reminds Paris of the idea again two years later (4 August 1895) (f. 381v); he cites the phrase as the highest form of intellectual praise for his colleague and friend, Édouard Chavannes (Bédier, “Préface,” Fables 14).  11. Bédier, Études critiques x–xi; Renan, L’avenir 135.  12. Letter to Prévost, 4 September 1913 (Marcel Prévost 2:348–50).  13. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation” 892.  14. ibid.  15. Anderson 197–203, especially 200.  16. Renan, L’avenir 221; Halbwachs (on individual and collective memory).  17. Une amitié 73, 77; Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 50 (see chapter 3).  18. Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 9.  19. ibid.  20. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation” 891.  21. “Toute littérature . . . débute par un chef-d’œuvre et il n’a pas de passé” (Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 6; also in Lot, Joseph Bédier 15); similar idea in earliest publications and courses (e.g., “Les commencemens” 883; CFB, liasse 7bis, p. 193).  22. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:448.  23. Bédier, “Les historiens” 76, 78–80; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 456, 460; the Leblonds note appreciatively that Bédier replaces “foreign” influences with medieval ones (“Joseph Bédier” 383). Similar ideas in Bédier, “Les lais” 843; letter to the Marquise, 16 October 1913 (BVC, f. 129).  24. Bédier, “La société” 906–7; Berry.  25. Bédier, “Les lais” 863, “Les fêtes” 166, Légendes épiques 3:270–71, Lai xxxviii, “L’esprit” 106, Légendes épiques 4:446–47, Roland à Roncevaux 8, 10, 22–23,

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“La tradition” 171, 353. Corbellari also comments on Bédier’s colorfully anachronistic style (Joseph Bédier 76–79).  26. Bédier, “L’art religieux” 141–42 (in praise of Mâle’s L’art religieux de la fin du moyen âge); similar point in “Discours au Congrès de langue française à New York,” 1913, p. 4 (CFB, liasse 106).  27. Guyau 2, 13, 17, 44–51. Bédier returns to Guyau, briefly, in the Légendes épiques, citing his “formula”: “Il ne faut pas demander aux systèmes d’être vrais, mais de le devenir” [One shouldn’t ask systems to be true, but to become true] (3:288).  28. Bédier, Roman de Tristan et Iseut xii, “Sur le Roman” (CFB, liasse 27; ed. in Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 629–30).  29. Cf. Milner; Nora, “Michelet.”  30. Gossman, Between 258–60; Crossley.  31. Michelet, “Héroïsme de l’esprit,” Œuvres complètes 4:40 (cited in Gossman, Between 284).  32. Bédier presents his own work on the epic as a “rupture” with no history (Légendes épiques 1:182–83).  33. Timeless beauty: letter to Texte, December 1886 (Une amitié 36). Citation: “il faut se plonger corps et âme dans leur temps [des œuvres] pour en goûter encore le charme à la fois éphémère et immortel” (CFB, liasse 104bis).  34. “L’œuvre belle ne révèle toute sa beauté que dans son climat, dans son paysage. Le secret, Goethe l’a dévoilé: ‘Qui veut comprendre le poète, qu’il aille donc d’abord au Pays du poète’” (Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 8). Gaston Paris compared Bédier’s own Tristan et Iseut to Goethe’s “world literature” (“Préface” xi).  35. Aarsleff.  36. 3 October 1907 (BVC, ff. 46–48).  37. Bédier, Légendes épiques 1:x.  38. Ibid. 3:387; also Vinaver, A la recherche 31–34.  39. Bédier, Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:319.  40. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 375.  41. Bloch, “Mieux vaut jamais que tard” 83n14 (also “New Philology” 38–46); also Aarsleff 93, 104; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 30, 379, 470; Nichols, Romanesque Signs 151.  42. Renan, Souvenirs 760.  43. Lot, Joseph Bédier 16, 39–40; Jaloux; Vinaver, Hommage 17; Boulenger 99 (Bédier prefaced his translation Romans de la Table Ronde, 1922).  44. “Le temps de la perfection littéraire dure à peu près ce que dure l’indépendance d’une littérature à l’égard des littératures étrangères” (cited in Boulard 223).  45. Letter to Texte, 13 May 1895 (Une amitié 236); Texte himself committed unequivocally to comparative literature (Jean-Jacques Rousseau 458; letter to Mâle,

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23 May 1897, Une amitié 255; Études (which predicts the development of “postnational” Europe).  46. Bédier, Fabliaux 58 (except where noted, references are to the 1st ed.).  47. Paris, “Les contes orientaux” 81.  48. Bédier, Fabliaux 35; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 102. Bassouto tales appeared in French in 1895 ( Jacottet).  49. Bédier, Fabliaux 215–17, 247.  50. Ibid. 45–52; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 109.  51. Marimoutou, Les engagés du sucre 20, 61, 168; Fuma, Histoire d’un peuple 231–42; Binoche 62–63.  52. ADR 8M97; ADR 8M91; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 150 (at the same time, he credited Indian influences for the unique genius of Leconte de Lisle, Dierx, and Bédier: Les grandes heures 238).  53. Fabliaux 216–18, 238. Bédier also defended class segregation, finding the apparent mixing of “bourgeois” and “aristocratic” influences in the fabliaux a “strange promiscuity” (Fabliaux 344).  54. Bédier had already decided to study the fabliaux (letter from Texte to Mâle, 4 May 1887, Une amitié 51); he completed much of the thesis with few books at hand, writing “à l’improviste” (letter to Gaston Paris, 22 November 1890) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 332).  55. Bédier, Fabliaux 239–40. In subsequent editions, Bédier makes the second teller more French by changing the spelling of his name (Martigau) and repatriates the English businessman (who merely travels from Sydney) (2nd–4th eds., 277–78).  56. Montaiglon and Raynaud 5:109–14. Bédier conspicuously sanitized his list of fabliaux titles (Fabliaux 393–97; Arthur 27; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 86–87) (he calls the “Le jugement des cons” simply “Le jugement”); he distances himself further by adding in later editions that he only read bawdy tales “for the needs of this research” (2nd–4th eds., 277).  57. I thank Andrew Cowell for prompting me to think more deeply about these contradictions.  58. Bédier, Fabliaux 241.  59. Ibid. 236.  60. Lenient, “La poésie patriotique” 36, 38 (see chapter 2).  61. Bédier, Fabliaux 274–79, 314–15; Lenient, Satire 13. On Bédier and the esprit gaulois, Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 89–99; Lot, Joseph Bédier 40.  62. Bédier, Fabliaux 248–49; on the current state of fabliaux philology, Busby 1:437–63.  63. Brunetière, “Les fabliaux” 199.  64. Letter from Céline Du Tertre, 24 May 1893 (CFB, liasse [109]).  65. Bédier, “La mort” 486, 494; again in Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:125.

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 66. Bédier, Roman de Tristan par Thomas 1:v, 2:155, 168–87, 313.  67. Ibid. 2:101–67; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 170–83 (Bédier would not even discuss theories of Persian connections, 180–81).  68. Eozen; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 449–62 (fittingly, Bédier’s drama Tristan et Iseut was translated into Gaelic: Gégou 158); southerners objected to Bédier’s dismissal of Provençal literature (“Joseph Bédier,” Petit Marseillais). Bédier’s chauvinism became legendary at the École Normale, as witnessed by a 1927 student song: “Bédier, to demonstrate that our France alone had cultivated the mind, will show portraits of Taine and Lanson whose radiant faces make obvious their pure French genius” [“Bédier, pour démontrer que notre France seule / A cultivé l’esprit, montrera les portraits / De Taine et de Lanson dont les radieuses gueules / Font éclater aux yeux le pur génie français”] (cited in Sirinelli 327).  69. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen 82–84, 100, 489–90.  70. Adolphe Bédier defined kinship “à la mode de Bretagne” (6). Creole celticism led Marius Leblond to misjudge Bédier’s Tristan et Iseut as admirably “Celtic,” and to accurately recognize his debt to Leconte de Lisle (Les grandes heures 238).  71. Bédier, Roman de Tristan et Iseut xii.  72. The first lines of medieval French appear in italics—indicating that Bédier considered them not part of the poem’s original form (Roman de Tristan par Thomas 1:viii, 6–7); the next extended passage of medieval French comes over two hundred pages later (1:248–50).  73. Ibid. 2:35–36, 318; “Quinze visages” 30 (England in the twelfth century was “more than half French,” 24). Similarly, Bédier “nationalized” Marie de France’s Anglo–Norman poetry: Henry II had a purely French court; he probably did not speak English; he had no English blood in his genealogy (“Les lais” 843).  74. Bédier, Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:21–22, 26, 39 (citation).  75. Ibid. 2:40–41.  76. Bédier, “Hilaire Belloc.”  77. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 157–62.  78. Grevisse no. 1976.  79. Cohen, “Joseph Bédier (1864–1938)” 10; Vinaver, Hommage 17; Gallagher; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 212–15, “Joseph Bédier: (d’)écrire la passion.”  80. CFB, liasse 27 (Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 629–30).  81. Paris, “Préface” iii, v.  82. Bédier, Roman de Tristan et Iseut 220.  83. “À mon sens, [c’est] la forme première de l’épisode, bien qu’aucun texte ne la conserve; seule elle satisfait l’esprit” (Bédier, “Réponse” 213, responding to a critic who found the “original” episode “improbable”). The scene concerns Iseult’s response to the sight of Tristan’s ring toward the end of the chapter Bédier entitles “Tristan fou” (ed. 1900, pp. 262–63; Belloc 167; later editions, some also dated 1900, pp. 202–5). Bédier elaborates on the episode’s psychology in his

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edition (Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:293–94; see also Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 244); Bédier also edited two other versions of the scene (Les deux poèmes 42–43, 104–5).  84. Letter to Paul Meyer, 4 August 1903 (BNF, NAF MS 24418, ff. 196–96v); Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 438–40, 444; Horne and Kramer on controversies around Bédier’s wartime publications.  85. “Je crois que les vieux textes ont une âme et qu’il est inutile de perdre son temps à les déchiffrer, si l’on ne se sent pas l’âme en sympathie avec eux . . . il ne doit pas y avoir de différence entre le travail de l’érudit et celui du romancier” (Pays).  86. “Si, jadis, je n’avais été amoureux, à quinze ans, de ma cousine” (Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 130; Hart). Hart cites Tristan et Iseut to describe the poignancy of Bédier’s death — distant from yet devoted to Bourbon, like Tristan in his final agony for Iseult.  87. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 11; Roman de Tristan et Iseut 66, 204. Cf. Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 355 (“les îles fortunées); Pujarniscle 45; Armand Touche, “Réunion, terre fortunée” (1931) (ADR 8M106).  88. Ary Leblond in Congrès 100; Barquissau, Le roman colonial 9; Marius Leblond, Les grandes heures 193–95.  89. Bongie, Islands and Exiles 96.  90. Bernardin, Paul et Virginie 183, 187, 192–93.  91. Paris, “Préface” ix, x, xi.  92. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 10; Adolphe Bédier 56–57; D’Alméras (on the historical Mlle. Caillot [never named Virginie] and the shipwreck).  93. Survivors identified the young officer as Longchamps de Montendre; their bodies were never found (D’Almeras 76–77).  94. Bernardin, Paul et Virginie 179.  95. “Ils furent placés chacun dans une tombe séparée: les deux tombes s’élèvent à une demi-lieue du théâtre du naufrage, sur les bords d’une petite rivière, l’une sur la rive droite, l’autre sur la rive gauche: au milieu de touffes de bambou: elles sont en face l’une de l’autre, de même forme, de même hauteur, séparées par l’eau qui n’est pas large de 20 pieds: pas de nom sur les tombes. C’est que la propriété sur laquelle elles s’élèvent appartenait, sans doute, à la famille de Virginie, qui n’avait pas besoin de graver son nom sur la pierre pour savoir qui reposait là. Vous trouverez dans mon secrétaire deux petits fragments que j’ai détachés de chacune des deux tombes. Le souvenir des ces lieux ne s’effacera jamais de ma mémoire . . .” (Adolphe Bédier 56–57).  96. Bernardin, Paul et Virginie 213. The novel, however, may tell a “truer” story: Mauritians affirmed that the tombstones were erected after the novel’s publication to attract English tourists, with Paul’s added in response to their inquiries;

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the popular site was destroyed in 1869 to make way for a railroad (D’Alméras 76–77).  97. Paris, “Préface” i.  98. “La simplicité du dévoûment [sic], l’accomplissement viril et joyeux du devoir quotidien, une conception simple et grave de la vie” (Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 48).  99. Le nouveau journal de l’île de la Réunion (10 March 1910) (cited in NomdedeuMaestri 1:86); Boisneuf 105–15; Eve, Jeu politique 5–64; Chazelet 120–24, 135; Nomdedeu-Maestri 1:82–121, 2:44–47. 100. Nomdedeu-Maestri 1:92, 2:47; see chapter 3. 101. Letter to Brunetière, 26 August 1896 (BNF, NAF MS 25030, f. 285bis). 102. “Un chef-d’œuvre,” Le peuple (2 September 1938). 103. Paris, “Préface” i; Paris insinuates that Bédier may even have composed in Old French verse before translating himself into modern prose (v). 104. Bédier, “Lettre”; description by Bédier cited in Reizler. The illustrations themselves are not visible in the photograph (previously published in “Joseph Bédier: L’homme d’une île” and Le mémorial 5:308–9). 105. Bédier, Tristan et Iseut; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 290–96, 627; Colette 125–27. 106. Barrès, Un jardin sur l’Oronte 11–12, 27, 38, 96, Frank Martin, Le vin herbé (a musical oratio); Updike, Brazil (1994); more examples in Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 286–90, 735–37. 107. Corbellari on the relation between Bédier and Denis de Rougement (Joseph Bédier 182). 108. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 283–87, 661–63; Ridoux 817–37, 1027–29. 109. Lacroix and Walter. 110. E.g., a recent lycée project on Réunion, http://pedagogie2.ac-reunion.fr/ lyvergerp/FRANCAIS/tristan/Tristan.htm (Web 24 June 2008); Frankland (for a Québecois pedagogical series). 111. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 162–63; letters to Joseph Texte, 17 October and 31 December 1896 (Une amitié 248, 250–51). 112. Letter to Gaston Paris, 16 October 1893 (BNF, NAF MS 24431, ff. 376–77); Letter to Brunetière, 26 August 1896 (BNF, NAF MS 25030, f. 285bis); CFB, liasses 7bis, 102bis; Bédier hoped to teach Roland again in 1901 (letter to Roques, 24 October 1901 [Corbellari, Correspondance no. 57]). 113. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 130 (extended analysis, 155–296). Tristan et Iseut interrupted the Légendes épiques again in 1908, as Bédier worked on the dramatic adaptation (letter to Marquise, 23 November 1908) (BVC, ff. 64–67); work continued intermittently through 1934 (Corbellari, Correspondance nos. 130, 134, 137, 162, 181, 184, 203, 222, 301, 302, 306); Bédier undertook new philological research for a lecture in 1934, which he intended to include in his teaching that year (Bédier, “Quinze visages”).

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114. Bédier, “Quinze visages” 22. Elsewhere, Bédier termed lost originals “the geometric site of editors’ ignorance” (Commentaires 85n2). 115. Bédier, Légendes épiques 4:475; “Les chansons de geste.” Bédier similarly renders the lineage of his own theory as French as possible (Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 351–52). 116. Bédier, “La poésie” 812. 117. Bédier, “Préface,” Fables 12; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 110, 641; CFB, liasse 1. Bédier wrote to Paul Meyer just ten years after the Fabliaux that he had given up many of his “youthful opinions” (20 July 1903) (BNF, NAF MS 24418, ff. 194–95); he planned to leave questions of origins to those “more competent” (letter to Gaston Paris, 1 September 1895) (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 386v). 118. “Dès ma thèse de doctorat, consacrée aux Fabliaux, je réservai tous mes efforts, toutes mes recherches aux faits historiques ou aux légendes, aux récits nationaux devenus populaires, mais qui, selon moi, et contrairement à la théorie romantique, émanèrent originairement de l’élite” (Sanvoisin); contemporaries clearly noted the methodological similarity between the Fabliaux and the Légendes épiques (Aarsleff 105). 119. Concise summary of the pilgrimage route evidence in Bédier, “De la formation.” Bédier concludes this summary with a conspicuously clerical definition of the genre: “Opus francigenum” (236; also in “L’esprit” 108). 120. Bédier wrote that peasants relying only on oral memory knew more about Girard de Roussillon than Paul Meyer ever would (letter to Philip Becker, 26 June 1909 [Corbellari, Correspondance no. 147]). 121. Emery and Morowitz 143–69. 122. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 405–7; Barrès, Mes cahiers 10:188–90; Lasserre; François; Daudet dubbed Bédier France’s “lance d’Amfortas” for his glorification of the French epic (the lance from Wagner’s Parsifal, that pierced Christ and could only be handled by a pure knight) (Souvenirs 232). 123. Guiard; personal archives of Mme. Anne Mauduit (cited in Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 330). 124. Champion 679; Lognon 91; Grappe 290; Hanotaux, Histoire 1:xv; also Pays and Boulenger (Germany tried to “annex our epics,” 76). 125. Barthou 36; Michaëlsson 296. 126. “Elles nous servent encore, après tant de siècles, à fortifier en nous le sentiment national, la Légende Dorée de la patrie” (Bédier, “L’esprit” 108). 127. Foucque, “Apport” 130 (also Barquissau, “Esquisse” 64); Cazamian 344. 128. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:366–67. 129. Ibid. 3:268. 130. Ibid. 3:269. Bédier echoes Gaston Paris here (“Roncevaux” 226). 131. Instead of acknowledging Renan’s more recent formulation of national

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identity (1882), Bédier cites a few pages earlier Renan’s youthful agreement with the theory of oral composition. 132. Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais, eighteenth-century naval officer and former governor of Bourbon. 133. “Un de mes g[ran]ds oncles s’en fait, en 1809, casser le rein d’une balle à Madagascar, au Fort-Dauphin; un des mes ascendants directs a servi aux Indes sous La Bourdonnais; des gens de mon nom et de mon sang servent auj[ourd’]hui en Cochinchine, au Tonkin, au Soudain, et je sais ce que cette poignée de Français, les créoles de l’île B[ourbon], perdus au delà des mers, ont donné à la France de bons serviteurs, soldats, marins, h[ommes] d’état, industriels, poètes” (speech given in San Francisco) (CFB, liasse 106, p. 2); further references in Adolphe Bédier, 9, 23, 25; Bédier’s son served in colonial Morocco (letter to Roques, 24 August 1921) (BIF, MS 6142, f. 170). 134. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:269–70. 135. Adolphe accounts only for the parents of Bédier’s maternal grandfather; some further details of his maternal grandmother’s lineage appear only because they are also part of Adolphe’s paternal lineage. 136. Letter to Mareschal de Bièvre, 8 October 1920 (reproduced in Ryckebusch 181). 137. Ibid. 138. Adolphe Bédier 8–9. 139. “Heureux celui qui a laissé de tels souvenirs: il ne périt pas tant que ceux qui l’ont connu, pensent à lui et l’aiment et établissent ainsi par la mort une sorte de communication par delà la tombe” (ibid. 47). 140. Ibid. 69–70. 141. To Mme. Paris, 28 August 1903 (cited in Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 44); to the Marquise: “Nos morts n’ont de survie que dans notre mémoire: mais là, du moins, ils vivent vraiment; il dépend de nous qu’ils y aient une vie nouvelle et belle” (1 January 1905) (BVC, ff. 26–27). 142. “Et, par un étrange sortilège, les choses douloureuses de mon enfance et de ma jeunesse, même la fièvre, même ma béquille, même mes deuils d’alors, m’apparaissent pénétrées du même charme que mes souvenirs d’évènements heureux: toutes mes joies, toutes mes souffrances, pareillement épurées, je les chéris de la même tendresse, à la fois lointaine et vivace” (Bédier, “Lettre”). 143. Corbellari likewise notes the spurious nature of the proof, and of Bédier’s entire thesis of origins (Joseph Bédier 7, 366–84). 144. Ibid. 402–19. 145. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:453; also in “L’art et le métier” 321. Nationalist appreciations of Bédier’s work cite this passage frequently. 146. E.g., Zumthor; Kay, Chanson de geste.

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147. Letters to the Marquise, 8 September 1911, 17 Oct 1912 (BVC, ff. 106, 120); letter to Mario Roques, 6 January 1925 (BIF, MS 6142, f. 172); Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 303–4, 488–89. 148. Lot, Joseph Bédier 27–28; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 488–89, 497–98. 149. Roques, “Joseph Bédier” 561; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 364. 150. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 364. 151. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 121. 152. In 1928 (4th ed.), the border disappears from the preface; in 1931 (5th ed.) it appears only at the top of the first page. 153. Corbellari, “Traduire” 67; Bédier, Chanson, l. 850. Corbellari emphasizes Bédier’s secularization of Gautier’s Catholic approach (Joseph Bédier 365–66). 154. Bédier, Chanson, l. 3968, p. 301 (2nd ed. 1924), p. 331 (6th ed. 1937). Gautier printed the error at least through his eleventh edition (1881). 155. Gautier’s early editorial ideas were exactly the same as Bédier’s: using the oldest manuscripts, the editor should scrupulously respect their forms and “change nothing of their language” (Épopées françaises, 1st ed., 1:662); by 1875, he had a more interventionist attitude (Chanson, 4th ed., 425). Bédier also pursued Gautier’s dream of bringing epics to the theater stage (Épopées françaises, 2nd ed., 1:548; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 384–401). 156. Gautier explains in detail in his 7th ed. (Chanson xliii–xlvi, 405–48), more briefly in subsequent editions and in Les épopées françaises, 2nd ed., 1:254–80. On Gautier’s impact, Ridoux 613–20 and Duggan, “General Introduction” 19–22. 157. Bédier, “De l’autorité” 334; “De l’édition” 148 (passing reference to Gautier). Bédier criticized Gautier’s post–1880 text even before developing a full editorial philosophy (course notes for 1893–94) (CFB, liasse 7bis, pp. 160–68, 193). 158. Bédier, Commentaires 84–92; Duggan, “General Introduction” 24–26. 159. Bédier on Oxford manuscript: Bédier, Commentaires 93–177 (citation at 135; also Chanson de Roland vi). Michel’s “heroic” transcription: Burde; Bloch, Needle 47–74; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 364; Bédier even suggests adopting Michel’s 1869 title, Roman de Roncevaux (Commentaires 66–67; “De l’édition” 147, 456–69, 492). 160. Already in the Fabliaux, Bédier credited Michel with the “best manuscript” method he himself later adopted (444–45). Even Stengel, however, had once edited the Oxford manuscript—in diplomatic transcription no less (1878). 161. Duggan, “General Introduction” 6–18. 162. Paris, Extraits iv; Gautier, Chanson, 7th ed., xlv, 407; further examples of dialectal reconstruction in Ridoux 613–20; Taylor 52–53. 163. Bédier, Chanson ii (a belief held since his first courses, CFB, liasse 7bis); Légendes épiques 4:449 (“it exists because one man existed”), Roland à Roncevaux 10, 22–23. 164. Bédier, Commentaires 37–39.

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165. Ibid. 241–44. 166. Ibid. 244–50, 263–97. 167. Lenient, “La poésie patriotique” 39. Bédier dramatized his claim when he spoke at the Bodleian Library just after the war of 1914–18 (Roland à Ronceavaux). 168. “Il est déplorable qu’on la lise aujourd’hui dans des éditions allemandes, d’ailleurs détestables” (16 October 1913) (BVC, ff. 128–128r). 169. E.g., Marmier cited in Duggan, “Franco-German” 98; Michel, Rapport 21; Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” clxxiii. 170. Bédier, “La société” 907, 920, 934. 171. One memorialist connects Bédier’s nationalism directly back to Gaston Paris’s lecture on the Roland on 8 December 1870 (Bordeaux, “Joseph Bédier,” Le petit journal). 172. Bédier, Chanson, 2nd ed. (1924), 3rd. ed. (1927), 4th ed. (1928). The title appears first in 1st ed. (1922), 5th ed. (1931), 6th ed. (1937). 173. “De cet atavisme tropical, le Parisien de fraîche date a voulu se souvenir dans sa dédicace d’une de ses œuvres” (“Joseph Bédier,” Nation belge, 6 September 1938). 174. Cited in Senex. 175. Bédier, “Lettre.” 176. “J’ai mis dans ce livre et dans les travaux qui lui font ou lui feront cortège, le meilleur de moi-même; il m’a semblé que je pouvais me permettre d’en faire hommage à notre île, et que c’était le seul moyen que je cherchais de lui marquer quelque chose de ma reconnaissance” (cited in Senex). 177. “Quand il publia sa Chanson de Roland, il dit aux Leblond: ‘Je me demande comment témoigner mon amour et ma reconnaissance à mon petit pays . . . Pensezvous qu’ils seront contents là-bas, si j’écris en dédicace quelques mots comme ceux-ci: A l’île Bourbon, mon pays bien aimé?’” (Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 129). 178. Adolphe Bédier 93; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 126; Lycée de Saint-Denis (1880–81). 179. Fournier 17. 180. Bédier, Discours (ADR GB201). 181. Cazemage, “La vie” 112. 182. ADR 8M86; ADR 7J1. 183. Foucque, “Inauguration” 175; Cazemage, “La vie” 114. 184. Brunet 174. Brunet was among the small group who attended Bédier’s funeral (Urruty; Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 130; Le progrès, 29 September 1938). 185. Hirel 15. 186. “Jean D’Esme, en effet, nous a conté naguère la confidence que lui fit un jour le professeur au Collège de France: A une distribution des prix du lycée de Saint-Denis, il avait reçu une édition de la Chanson de Roland (sans doute celle de Gautier, qui avait paru quelques années auparavant). Le soir même . . . il s’était

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plongé dans la lecture du beau poème et son étonnement admiratif fut tel qu’il reporterait volontiers à cette soirée l’éveil de sa vocation pour le Moyen-Age” (Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 121). 187. Letter from Bédier to Georges Mareschal de Bièvre (8 October 1920) (reproduced in Ryckebusch 181); Hirel. Mareschal de Bièvre and Jean D’Esme both published articles in Le visage de la France: La France lointaine (along with Pierre Mille and other procolonialists) on the eve of the 1931 exposition; Mareschal de Bièvre lent paintings of Réunion for the retrospective exhibit in the museum (Olivier, Exposition coloniale 5.1:151); he dedicated a copy of his history of Réunion to the Leblonds (ADR, LEB 248). 188. Cohen, Ceux que j’ai connus 155; see chapter 3. In “Joseph Bédier” (1939), Cohen reported the conversation taking place in Bédier’s apartment, next to the desk from Réunion decorated with images of Tristan and Iseult. 189. Hoepffner; Pesenti Rossi; Craig 195–290 (on Maugain at 280; donations from the Marquise at 241). 190. “Si je n’ai pas eu la chance de naître à la Réunion, j’ai du moins la Guadeloupe comme petite patrie” (5 May 1920; a letter from Cohen follows, also referring to arrangements for Bédier’s visit, 7 May 1920) (CFB, liasse 106). 191. Leblond, La France devant l’Europe 75–81; Leblond and Charpentier, L’Alsace et la Lorraine (“this proves that, all the way to the colonies, the entire nation has not ceased to think with energetic love of its two dearest provinces,” avant-propos). 192. CFB, carton XXXIII (unnumbered package next to liasse 106). This package includes a poster of Alsace from 1913: Bédier gave lectures that year in German-controlled Strasbourg and Mulhouse (letter to Philip Becker, 13 February 1913 [Corbellari, Correspondance no. 218]; letter to the Marquise, 16 October 1913 [BVC, f. 130]). 193. On printing schedule of Bédier’s Roland: letter to Roques, 29 April 1920 (BIF, MS 6142, ff. 167–68). Citation: [A]mour de la France être devenu culte des ancêtres. terre majur” (CFB, carton XXXIII). 194. “La France une et indivisible, qu’est-ce que cela veut dire? Cela veut dire l’Alsace aux Alsaciens, comme la Bretagne aux Bretons, comme le Béarn aux Béarnais, c[omme] le Dauphiné aux Dauphinois; et en même temps toute la France aux Dauphinois et aux Béarnais, toute la France aux Normands, aux Flamands, toute la France aux Alsaciens, toute la France à tous les enfants, afin que tous soient riches de sa diversité et de son amour . . .” (CFB, liasse 106). 195. Letter dated 27 June 1920 (CFB, liasse 112) 196. Légendes épiques 3:367. As Italo Siciliano notes, Bédier adds later the Christian emphasis “marked by sanctuaries” [jalonnée de sanctuaires] (65n2; Bédier, Commentaires 30). 197. Corbellari, “Traduire” 63n1; Short 42.

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198. Duggan, “General Introduction” 12, 26–28, 33–34; Short 45–46; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 364n98 (citing Segre). 199. Short 42. 200. E.g., “It’s to the son of a creole of the Mascarenes, Joseph Bédier, that it was given to discover the accents, harmonies, and, in a word, the inspiration of the most ancient and most French of the national works, the Song of Roland” (“C’est au fils d’un créole des Mascareignes, Joseph Bédier, qu’il a été donné de retrouver les accents, les harmonies, et, en un mot, l’inspiration de la plus ancienne et de la plus française des œuvres nationales, la Chanson de Roland”) (Louis-Philippe May 407). 201. Short 47–50. 202. Duggan, “General Introduction” 36–37; Taylor; K. Murray; Burland; Busby 1:368–404. Meanwhile, Gautier is also back in circulation (2003). 203. “Je n’ai pas le sens du discontinu” (Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 9). 5. A Creole Epic

  1. Mathieu (and others in this collection); Marimoutou, “Langues étrangères.”   2. Glissant, Poétique 174–86, 250–51. On Glissant’s poetics, Dash 147–49, 179–81; Hallward 66–132; Bongie, Islands and Exiles 63–66, Friends and Enemies 32–270; Prabhu 106–22. Similarly, Vergès and Marimoutou characterize Réunionnais identity as perpetual “becoming” (“Introduction”).   3. Glissant, Discours 190–201, La cohée 74–75.   4. Glissant, Poétique 27–28; also Intention 36–37, Discours 246–52, Faulkner 32–34, 136–47, 176–94, 303–5, 312–13, Introduction 35–37, 67–68, 78–79.   5. E.g., Glissant, Discours 192–94, 236–70, 451–52; Poétique 84–89, 176–77; Traité 108–23. Elsewhere, Glissant also engages medieval culture, from philosophy (Traité 92–123) to literature (Intention 36–37, Introduction 35, Poétique 27, 62–63, Traité 158–69, Une nouvelle région 140–41, La cohée 97–98); see especially Glissant and Leupin.   6. Glissant, Poétique 216; also Intention 288, Discours 199, 278, 452.   7. Glissant, Une nouvelle région 140–41; see also Leupin, “L’ancien français.”   8. Glissant, Intention 207.   9. Glissant, Poétique 191.  10. Bédier, Chanson l. 1015 (hereafter cited by line number in the text); Roland later repeats the sentiment (“Nos avum dreit, mais cist glutun unt tort,” l. 1212).  11. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” vii.  12. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:433–34, 448–49, Roland à Roncevaux; Robert Cook; Cerquiglini 45–46, 55–56; Enders; Haidu 76–83; Burland 60–67.  13. Bédier, Chanson x.  14. Bédier, Chanson xii–xiii; related comments in course notes (CFB, liasse

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55; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 275). Bédier nonetheless shocked some observers with the innovative vocabulary of his Académie acceptance speech (“La vie des mots,” Le temps, 9 November 1921).  15. Bédier, Chanson xii.  16. Ibid. Vitet expressed a similar esthetic appreciation in 1852 (853, 864).  17. Corbellari, “Traduire” 65. Corbellari notes linguistic similarities between the Roland and Tristan translations (“Traduire” 81).  18. Leupin, La passion 164.  19. Corbellari, “Traduire” 69, 75.  20. Bédier, Chanson ll. 1691, 2311, 2363, 2867, 3477; pp. 143, 195, 199, 239, 289 (page numbers refer to Bédier’s 1937 edition unless otherwise noted; subsequent reprints use the same pagination).  21. Bédier, Chanson l. 3987, p. 331.  22. Bédier, “L’art et le métier” 320; Légendes épiques 3:452 (variations on libre appeared previously in Génin p. 192; Gautier, 1st ed. l. 2311; Paris, “La Chanson de Roland ” 118); sainte has become the most accepted translation (e.g., Short, l. 2311).  23. Nichols, Romanesque Signs 149.  24. Bédier, Chanson ll. 600, 818, 952, 1532, 1659, 1784.  25. Bédier, Commentaires 303. Gautier made the opposite choice (Chanson, 1st ed., p. 49).  26. Bédier often chooses style over philology (e.g., Bédier, “Réponse” 212; Vinaver, A la recherche 31–47; Corbellari, “Traduire” 78–79).  27. Bédier also speaks in medieval French when he prints “Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet” at the end of his translation (Corbellari, “Traduire” 76). Elsewhere, Bédier insists that he worked on the Légendes épiques the same amount of time that Charles spent in Spain — “set anz tuz pleins” (“De l’édition” 152).  28. Lafont on the ideological implications of Bédier’s phrase (2:271–72).  29. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:452.  30. Bédier, Commentaires 39 (Uitti also equates “dulce France” and “terre majur” [Alexis 137]). Lot calls Bédier’s interpretation “delicious” but “ridiculous” (“Études” 374n1). Gautier and others have preferred the Venice IV manuscript for l. 600 (“Trestuta Spagna”): Bédier again follows aesthetics, finding terre majur “the most nuanced form, therefore probably the original form” (Commentaires 147).  31. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” 906.  32. Bédier, “La poésie” 822.  33. Moignet, Brault and Short all follow Bédier; a few criticized Bédier’s grammar (Clédat, review of Commentaires, 152).  34. Fustel, “De la manière” 245.  35. Barrès draws on Renan (Digeon 405–6, 449–50), as does Bédier; he defines the nation just like the medievalists of 1870: “a nation is a territory where men possess in common memories, customs, a hereditary ideal” (Barrès, Appel au soldat 146).

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 36. Le 75e anniversaire 13, 43–44, 56–59; Hartog 170–95; Weber, “Gauls versus Franks” 18–19.  37. E.g., Boissonade 72; T. Atkinson Jenkins 52; De Mandach 44 (tracing “Tere Certaine” to the same Arab geographers, 43); Versteegh on Arabs in tenthcentury France.  38. Walker 128–29; De Mandach notes the same possibility (44).  39. Bédier, Légendes épiques 1:434, 3:368–80; Commentaires 15–17, 40–64. On historical interaction between epic narratives and monastic foundation legends, Remensneyder 182–211.  40. Bédier, Commentaires 49, 299–300. Marzouki suggests that Bédier’s claim that the poet demonstrates a fair knowledge of Islam (Commentaires 50–51) only reveals his own ignorance (120–22).  41. Ibid. 16–17; Bédier does refute Boissonade’s ideas concerning other Arabic etymologies (Commentaires 44n4, 54n1). Bédier read Boissonade’s manuscript, and in a letter dated 8 October 1921 proposed to discuss what he considered its greatest flaws (CFB, liasse 102bis; C–XII, no. 164); an advertisement for Bédier’s own book includes a notice for Boissonade’s (CFB, liasse 8). Cf. Lafont’s defense of an original Occitan Roland.  42. Bédier considered Boissonade’s work a “monstrous caricature” of his own subtle thesis (Lot, Joseph Bédier 25). Lot wrote a damning review of Boissonade’s book (“Études”); other reviews were equally unenthusiastic about the épopée à clé (e.g., Cirot).  43. Duggan, “Franco-German” 100. In the wake of the North African crises of 1911, Marcel Sembat compared the figure in Mattisse’s painting Le Riffain (1912) to the “Moors” of Roland (194).  44. On the history of the Mosquée, Aldrich, Vestiges 51–54; Kepel 64–76; MacMaster 71–74. In 1926, when the mosque opened, the Rif war ended in Morocco: Abd el-Krim was exiled to Réunion, living for a time in the Château Morange (Livre d’or [1931] 138).  45. Weiss 55.  46. E.g., Marzouki; Bercovi-Huard; Brault 1:176, passim.  47. Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries 15–45; Boutet; Leupin, La passion 154–79; Haidu (especially 55–59, 128–33, 175); Cowell 102–14; Kaye.  48. Bloch, Etymologies 107.  49. Bédier, Chanson ll. 2318–21 (God gives Durendal to Charles), 2389–96 (angels welcome Roland to the afterlife), 2448–59 (God stops the sun for Charles), 3993–98 (Gabriel sends Charles to defend Christians).  50. Grabar; reviews of object theory from a medieval perspective in Cowell (1–51) and Sponsler.  51. E.g., practices of tribute payments between Muslims and Christians that lie behind Roland’s early scenes (Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries 15–24); French

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and Iberian artistic forms that manifest cultural “mixing” (Snyder; Dodds, “Islam,” Architecture 83–116).  52. Constable, especially 169–81; Liu 113–29, 175–78 Jacoby.  53. According to Ganelon, Roland distributes such silks (along with “guarnemenz”) (ll. 396–99), much like courtly heroes (Burns, Courtly Love Undressed 191–97; Kinoshita, “Almería Silk”). He thus solidifies his position among the Franks by circulating “foreign” goods. cf. Burns, Sea of Silk.  54. H. Murray 169–206 (195–96, on al-Rashîd), 394–442 (on spread to northern Europe); Wichmann on ivory chess pieces (Figures 1–34); Pastoureau on the pieces associated with Charlemagne (images also in St. Aubyn 190; Le trésor de Saint-Denis 132–41).  55. Rey 782–83; cf. crowning of Erec in Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide l. 6651.  56. “Galazin” may refer to Galatia, a province near Constantinople known for sericulture ( Jenkins l. 2973n; Muthesius 316). The wrapping of the heroes’ hearts resembles the use of silks to encase Christian relics in al-Andalus, signifying Christianity’s victory over Islam (Dodds, “Islam” 32–33). It is possible that Roland distinguishes between Christian and pagan silk (Galazinian and Alexandrian), reserving the latter for traitors. The source of Charles’s palies, however, remains unspecified.  57. Delort 1:321–24; Martin 5–24; Serjeant 17, 105, 209–11. Fur trade from the Rus’ also passed through Constantinople (Martin 35–60); examples of “eastern” influences on European dress in Gervers; Burns, “Saracen Silk.”  58. Ibn Zubayr, cited in Gil 313n56; further examples in Serjeant 167–68.  59. Constable 198–99; Serjeant 196, 209, 211; Renart ll. 4782–85.  60. Dodds, “Islam” 30–31; Holcomb; St. Aubyn 71–74, 79, 86; Nees 147–257; Shalem, The Oliphant 8–49.  61. Goldschmidt 1:33–35, no. 123 (thirteenth-century; walrus ivory carved with images of royalty; currently in Salzburg); Mas’ūdī 8.  62. E.g Bestiary 39–43; Kaske 124–26.  63. Brault 1:176. I elaborate more extensively on these issues in “The Noise of Roland.”  64. This is first time that Roland refers to religious, rather than ethnic, identity (Brault 1:179).  65. Nichols, Romanesque Signs 171; as Burland points out, Roland never considers that he might be forgotten (30).  66. Burger 116; Cowell 104–5.  67. Brault 1:184.  68. Bédier, Chanson ll. 1059, 1070, 1101, 1171.  69. E.g., Pauphilet 178; Burger; Nichols, “Roland’s Echoing Horn”; Kostoroski; Ebitz, “The Oliphant”; Magnúsdóttir 321–71.

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 70. “Roland’s” oliphant: Magnúsdóttir 363–64 and pl. 9; Lombard-Jourdan 126; Le trésor de Saint-Denis 142–43; Les trésors des églises pl. 28. Charlemagne’s oliphant: Kühnel 53–54; Shalem, Islam Christianized 38–43, 373.  71. Images: Kühnel 14–19, 52–59, 61–67, 85–88, 99–103. Oliphant craft industry: Ebitz, “Fatimid Style”; Shalem, Islam Christianized 99–110; Kühnel 85, 87, 88 (Norman examples), nos. 54ff; Gaborit-Chopin 178 (southern Italy); Randall 146, 150, 164, 172, 173 (southern Italy); Philippowich 54, 56 (Byzantium). Etymology: Bellemy 275–76; Shalem, Islam Christianized 104.  72. Hoffman; Shalem, The Oliphant 136–37.  73. Ebitz, “Secular to Sacred”; Shalem, Islam Christianized 132–33, 248–49, 394.  74. Hunting: Kling; Magnúsdóttir 12. Land tenure: Clanchy 259; Maskell 241–42; Goldschmidt 2:21 (with Latin inscriptions); Cherry 113; Camber and Cherry. Storing relics: Ebitz, “The Oliphant” 125, 132–33. Church bells: Kühnel 61; Lombard-Jourdan 230; De Winter 66; Shalem, The Oliphant 107–30; Lademann 18–19.  75. Ebitz, “The Oliphant”; “The Medieval Oliphant.”  76. Ebitz points out that Kühnel’s survey does not clearly distinguish between elephant ivory and other kinds of dentine (“The Oliphant” 129); examples of nonelephantine horns in Goldschmidt 1:38–39; Gaborit-Chopin 115, 200. Arguments against an elephantine source for Roland’s horn in Lombard-Jourdan 221, 225, 230, 234; Magnúsdóttir 323, 370; Marx 125n2. Critical resistance to ivory aligns Roland’s material culture with its surface ideology. By contrast, the definition of olifant given in the 8th edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française (1932–35, the one that Bédier worked on) makes the instrument exclusively elephantine: “cor taillé dans une défense d’éléphant . . . L’olifant de Roland” (2:256).  77. Sister as object of exchange: Kinoshita, “ ‘Pagans are wrong’” 99; Harrison 673. Fear of disrupted genealogy: Bloch, Etymologies 103; Roland himself embodies this feudal fear of interruption (Etymologies 105).  78. Bédier, Chanson ll. 1423–37; Fritz 84–90, 116–28, 304–7, 311.  79. Nichols, Romanesque Signs 180–86; also Brault 1:263.  80. Haidu 35.  81. Oliphant and Roland: Nichols, Romanesque Signs 199; Atkinson. Speechless oliphant: Leupin, La passion 144. On fendre: Bédier, Chanson ll. 1645, 3604, 3927; other instances indicate near-fatal emotions (ll. 304, 1631); fendre also describes the opening of the stormy sky (l. 1432).  82. Nichols, Romanesque Signs 200; Vance, Mervelous Signals 75–85, “Style and Value” 89–93; Leupin, La passion 145.  83. Bédier proposed that the rock was a boundary marker, Roland’s move beyond a gesture that publicizes his death in enemy territory (Commentaires 308–10).  84. Vance, Mervelous Signals 75–76, “Style and Value” 89–94; also Bloch, Etymologies 103–5; Nichols, “The Interaction”; Haidu 18.

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 85. Ivoire and olifant: Bédier, Chanson pp. 53, 221. Seats and thrones: Ibid. pp. 49, 201. Bédier’s approach changed over time: in the first edition (1922), the second mention of Baligant’s faldestoed becomes a throne (l. 2804, p. 213); he later changed the first mention to match (p. 201, corrected by hand in Bédier’s personal copy, Collège de France; 1924, p. 203). In the end, only the actively treacherous Marsile remains “seated.” Meanwhile, Gautier’s first edition rendered all six mentions of faldestoed as fauteuil [armchair] (pp. 11, 33, 37, 49, 213, 225); he later turned two into thrones (e.g., 1880, ll. 407, 452). Short, on the other end of the spectrum, renders all six mentions trône.  86. Haidu 148–51.  87. Eg. Haidu 189–92; Cowell 103–6; Vance, Mervelous Signals 61–62, 69, 82–83.  88. Haidu 150.  89. Similarly, the narrator remains neutral over at least one Saracen death: “Death takes him, regardless of who cries or laughs” (l. 3364).  90. Kinoshita notes that Charles’s army includes recently conquered peoples (Medieval Boundaries 29–30).  91. Leupin, “henceforth silent” (La passion 144). Even if the contradicting passage represents a “later addition” ( Jenkins l. 3119n; Horrent 253), the effect on readers of the Oxford manuscript remains.  92. Kühnel 19, 85, 87, 88; Ebitz, “The Oliphant” 133–34; Golvin (on the oliphant of Saint-Sernin).  93. Mateu y Llopis, La moneda 109–10; Glosario 111–15 (with sources in both Latin and Spanish, and summary of etymological theories). Holmes connected mangun to mancuso, but argued for a derivation from a Gaulish word meaning “ring” (an argumentation that, like Bédier’s, makes the epic solely “French”).  94. E.g., Nichols, Romanesque Signs 188, 199; Leupin, La passion 145; Magnúsdóttir 375–76.  95. Kinoshita, “‘Pagans are wrong’ ” 100, also Medieval Boundaries 42–44.  96. E.g., Nichols, “The Interaction” 69–70; Haidu 128–33; Kinoshita, “ ‘Pagans are wrong’ ” 80, 91, 99–100; Long 116; Burland 53–58.  97. Haidu 166–67; Mickel on some of the trial’s broader legal contexts.  98. Ibid. 159, also 152–77; Halverson.  99. Ibid. 162; also Halverson 667. 100. Ibid. 161; Uitti also notes that the barons recommend forgetting Roncevaux (“‘Ço dit la geste’ ” 18–19); Cotton on “amur et feid” throughout Roland. 101. Bloch, Medieval French Literature and Law, especially 108–41. 102. Haidu 164–66. Bédier reinforces Thierry’s personal connection to the drama by placing him at Charles’s side for the discovery of Roland’s corpse: the Oxford manuscript names Charles’s companion as “Henri” but Müller and others (including most recently Short) correct to “Tierri” based on other manuscripts.

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Bédier maintained the Oxford text in his early editions (1922, 1924, l. 2883), but later changed (1937; Commentaires 192). 103. Haidu 167–69, Leupin, La passion 163–65, 181–95. Bédier, taking Ganelon’s point of view, considered Thierry’s intervention a judgment against private warfare (Commentaires 318). 104. Vance, Mervelous Signals 58–59; on specters of conversion, Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries 26–28. 105. Jenkins l. 3907n; Haidu 168–69. 106. The “Bruns” figure among Baligant’s troops (l. 3225) (most frequently, brun describes the color of steel, ll. 1043, 1953, 2089, 3603, 3926). Some Saracens can also look rather Frankish: the emir of Balaguer has “fair” features (l. 895); Marsile’s son is known as “Jurfaleu the blond” (ll. 1904, 2702). 107. The Arab chronicler Makkari records that Christian princes in Spain received marten furs for supporting the Muslim leader Mansur in 997 (Serjeant 169). 108. Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries 43; “‘Pagans are wrong’” 103. Despite this difference, Kinoshita suggests that both figures substantiate Roland’s absolutist vision, with Bramimonde’s conversion revealing the failure of Saracen society (Medieval Boundaries 15, 39; also Harrison). Against the background of Marsile’s false promise of conversion, however, we may entertain doubts as to Bramimonde’s sincerity—a prospect that would undermine Christian success. 109. Haidu 179–80, 162. 110. Ibid. 179. 111. “Ainsi il apparaît que la journée de Roncevaux n’est qu’un épisode de la longue croisade d’Espagne, qui n’est elle-même qu’un épisode dans la croisade sans fin du pèlerin deux fois centenaire” (Bédier, “Quelques scènes” 305). 6. Postcolonial Itineraries

  1. Gauvin, Michel Debré (1996) 196–200, 306–10; “Projet de loi d’orientation d’outre-mer”; “Loi no. 2000–1207.” On “bidepartmentalization,” Laurent. On Réunion’s newly unique constitutional status, Diémert 81–82; Isar; Roux 131–32.   2. Role; on traditionalist critiques of Créolie: Sam-Long, De l’élégie 198–201; Encyclopédie 7:118–20.   3. Sautai; Eve, “Éducation.”   4. Gauvin, Du créole opprimé 27–29, citing Boris Gamaleya, “Lexique.” I have transcribed the citation from the original letter.   5. “Certes les travailleurs intellectuels n’ont pas tous la chance d’un Joseph Bédier qui déclarait: ‘Il n’y qu’une langue — je ne m’en vanterai pas à mes confrères de l’Académie—que je sache bien manier, et c’est notre parler créole’” (Gauvin, Du créole opprimé 92). Recent repetitions: Axel Gauvin at Littérature

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réunionnaise; Georges and Robert Gauvin (with translation into Creole) (“Alon bien koz kréol,” Témoignages, 12 December 2006, accessed 7 July 2010).   6. Bédier, “Lettre”; nearly identical statement about “la langue créole” attributed to Bédier at a banquet for the Leblonds (“Joseph Bédier est mort!”); Marius Leblond reports that Bédier often enjoyed speaking Creole with his compatriots (Les îles sœurs 149)and remembers fondly a teacher who taught that Creole expressed love more subtly than Ronsard or Musset (Les îles sœurs 149, 152–55).   7. A reader at the ADR has marked both mentions of Creole in the letter; La victoire sociale advocated unions and better working conditions for Réunion’s laboring class (ADR 1PER59).   8. Nout Lang: Magazine pou met an ord la lang kréol Larénion 2 (2000): 7; on the magazine’s goals, Gauvin in Gauthier.   9. “Croisade pour le ‘kréol rénioné, inn lang,’” Le journal de l’île de la Réunion (27 October 2001). The crusade metaphor insinuates medieval colonialism right alongside Bédier’s reputation as a Creole speaking medievalist.  10. Revel; more recent press biography by Georges and Robert Gauvin.  11. Deixonne law (Loi no. 51–46, 11 January 1951, article 2); “Projet de loi d’orientation d’outre-mer” (No. 2322, Article 18); “Loi no. 2000–1207” (Article 34); survey of language laws in Véronique Bertile.  12. Certificat d’Aptitude au Professorat de l’Enseignement du Second degré, in Bulletin Officiel no. 11 (15 March 2001); no. 33 (13 September 2001). In 2010, only one of four candidates from Réunion received the CAPES (“Kapes Kréyol”). The French passage for translation was drawn from the Leblonds’ Ulysse, Cafre. Georges and Robert Gauvin aver that Bédier would have been one of the first to take the CAPES for Creole.  13. Of 9436 students taking the Baccalauréat exam in June 2007, 33 took sections in Creole (all but two of them as an “option” rather than to fulfill the language requirement); just over 400 had followed the “living regional language” curriculum. A new strategy for Creole pedagogy was adopted in 2008, and enrollment rose to over 700 in 2009: Académie de La Réunion (Web 24 May 2007, 8 July 2010: http://www.ac-reunion.fr).  14. Gauvin, “Créolisation” 83; Cellier on controversies around graphology; Chaudenson on sociolinguistic aspects (Créoles); discussion of graphic flexibility in pedagogy on Académie de La Réunion.  15. E.g., “Le Kréol à l’école, c’est du pipo,” Le journal de l’île de la Réunion (5 November 2007), cover and 10–11; Rapanoël on the views of some students.  16. Chaudenson, “Le cas des créoles” 66–67; revalatory illustration of centralization in the 2006 “Rapport du jury” (“Kapes kréol”).  17. Unveiling: “Hommage à Joseph Bédier”; further celebration on 29 October 1964 (lecture by Yves Drouhet on Bédier and the legend of Tristan and Iseult). Citation: “sur cette terrasse au mur de laquelle nous venons d’apposer une plaque

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commémorative, et à l’ombre du vieux manguier dont il ne reste aujourd’hui que le tronc desséché” (Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 121).  18. “Il faut fusiller le créole” (cited in Axel Gauvin, Du créole opprimé 63; Gilles Gauvin, “Créolisation” 76, 79), the phrase is still emblematic of cultural oppression (e.g., Crochet; Tenaille; Gélita Hoarau).  19. Cornu, “Economes”; Sam-Long 198–99; Encyclopédie 7:118; Dictionnaire biographique. 2:48. Cornu also directed the right-leaning periodical La voix des Mascareignes.  20. “Ce sentiment d’appartenance à une communauté de valeurs que nous apportent justement l’histoire de la Patrie et l’exemple de nos ancêtres”; “au cœur même de notre pays de France qui nous assume tous”; “l’éloignement n’est pas l’oubli” (Diefenbacher 114, 115).  21. Bulletin de l’Académie de la Réunion 22 (1965–66), 23 (1967–68) (with the participation of both Cornu and Diefenbacher). The conservative Revue cultuelle réunionnaise also began with Bédier and the poets, in 1976 (Dodille 193).  22. Gauvin, Michel Debré (1996) (2006); Debré; Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 141–54, 165–70; Lionnet, “Disease” 203–6.  23. Gauvin, Michel Debré (2006) 307–8; Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 147–48; Diefenbacher on the 1966 deportation of Réunionnais children to the département of La Creuse in CQFD: Ce qu’il faut dire, détruire, développer: mensuel de critique sociale 13 ( June 2004) (Web 15 June 2007: http://cequilfautdetruire.org).  24. Témoignages (10 June 1964). The day that Diefenbacher installed Bédier’s plaque, newspapers reported that the French senate had voted to repeal the “Ordonnance Debré” that allowed these kinds of deportations (Témoignages, 25 June 1964) (the law was finally repealed in 1972).  25. Gauvin, Michel Debré (2006) 69–74.  26. Ibid. 300–1; Lionnet, “Créolité” 108; Vergès, “‘Do You Speak Creole?’ ”; Idelson.  27. E.g., Martinez vol. 2; Sam-Long, Défi d’un volcan.  28. Cohen and Lortie 233–63.  29. Aldrich, “Putting the Colonies on the Map” 215, 218, 219, 221. Imperial streets near Avenue Joseph Bédier include Rue Regnault, Rue Paul Bert, and Boulevard Masséna; a few blocks away runs the short medievalist street, Rue Darmesteter.  30. “Vous avez lié à jamais ce nom à celui de Paris, vous l’avez intégré à l’être même de la Ville . . .” (Roques, “Allocution”); also Corbellari, “au sein du panthéon national” (Joseph Bédier 563). The five signs that marked the avenue in 2007 have four different forms, from just the name to descriptions that include “professeur et romaniste,” “médiéviste,” and “membre de l’Académie Française.”  31. Lot, Joseph Bédier 161; Pays; undated draft letter to Louis Artus (CFB, liasse 133).

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 32. “Paris propose son projet urbain aux communes de la banlieue,” Le monde (27 September 2001).  33. “Ensemble améliorons: le quartier Joseph Bédier-Porte d’Ivry,” no. 1, June 2004 (web, 18 July 2008: http://www.paris.fr; http://www.parisbedierportedivry.fr).  34. Ary Leblond in Congrès 98–100. In 1967, Bédier’s name was proposed for Saint-Denis’s restructured lycée. In the end, the lycée remained “Leconte de Lisle” and the collège on the original site took the name “Bourbon” (Lougnon, “Leconte de Lisle décapité”).  35. “Maison de Joseph Bédier (1864–1938). Élu à l’Académie Française en 1920, Joseph Bédier est surtout connu pour ses adaptations des grands textes de la littérature médiévale, comme Tristan et Iseut, publié en 1900 ou la Chanson de Roland en 1921” (with a photo of Bédier working at his “Bourbonnais” desk).  36. Le mémorial 7:62–65; ADR 380W190.  37. The prefect of Réunion wrote in 1956 that settlement began with the Compagnie des Indes and that Africans “did not count” in Réunion’s development (Les richessses de la France: revue de tourisme, de l’économie et des arts 25 [1956]: 23–24). The island was first “taken” by the French in 1638; other “beginnings” include 1640, 1642, and 1649. Saint-Denis hosted a tricentennial in 1938 (the year of a number of other important anniversaries) (ADR 8M11; Le peuple and Le progrès for October 1938). For the occasion, Ary Leblond devoted an exposition to Léon Dierx at the Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer (Le Palais des Colonies 225). While the national government refused to issue a commemorative stamp for 1938, the events of 1965 were so honored (Le progrès, 3 October 1965, 4–5; also Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 170–72).  38. Kichenapanaïdou. The tricentennial also rebaptised the nearby cave used by twelve exiles from Madagascar in 1646 as the “Grotte des premiers Français” [Cave of the first Frenchmen], aligning it with the settlement of 1665 (Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 171). The site, also called now “Cave of the first Réunionnais,” remains contested (e.g., “Polémique”).  39. Témoignages (28 September 1965, 30 September 1965); Le progrès (3 October 1965): 4–5 (description of the event).  40. Témoignages (24 September 1965, 3 October 1965).  41. “La Nation est une âme, un principe spirituel” (Le journal de l’île de la Réunion, 5 October 1965).  42. “La France est sans doute le seul pays où les problèmes de races et de couleurs ne se posent jamais” (Le journal de l’île de la Réunion, 12 October 1965). These affirmations took place in the context of France’s rejection and then de facto acceptance of “Euro-Algerians” after Algeria’s independence (Shepard).  43. ADR 249W18.  44. Ibid.; ADR 13Fi 44–47 (see chapter 3 for discussion of Bédier’s speech); cf. Cornu on Réunion’s “fidélité” (Paris et Bourbon 43). I recognized this citation

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as Bédier’s in Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 171, and was able to document its history with the assistance of Emmanuelle Vidal at the ADR.  45. Témoignages (27 October 2005, 19–20 Dec 2005).  46. Le journal de l’île de la Réunion (9 Dec 2005); interview with Gilles Gauvain in Témoignages (3–4 Dec 2005): 8–10; Témoignages (9 Dec 2005): 1, 7. On 29 Nov 2005, a majority of national deputies had refused to repeal the “procolonial” provision (it was finally repealed in February 2006). The whole episode reverberates with memories of the 1960s: the legislation was promulgated under the assembly presidency of Jean-Louis Debré (son of Michel) and supported by Michel Diefenbacher (son of Alfred, graduate of the Lycée Leconte de Lisle, former prefect of Guadeloupe, and established functionary of overseas politics). Further details in “Abrogation”; Bertrand; Bancel and Blancard, “Mémoire coloniale.”  47. Le journal de l’île de la Réunion (17 March 2007, 3 November 2007).  48. Premier Bulletin de Souscription (MLD, Album Léon Dierx, copy provided by Maryse Duchesne), published in La patrie créole (17 December 1910); overview of the museum’s history in Fournier 340–47; Ah-Koon and Duchêne (with transcriptions of relevant press articles).  49. “On attire à y revenir, par le prestige et la fascination de l’histoire, plusieurs des enfants qui allèrent chercher fortune au loin et qui, déracinés, y épuisent la sève de leur souche . . . La splendeur de la nature ne suffit à retenir dans un pays les fils des hommes . . . Par cette solidarité harmonieuse, que les jeunes Réunionnais, admirant les œuvres de leur race, s’élèvent à la volonté de créer autant de beauté!” (Leblond, “La Réunion et son Musée”).  50. “Plus gracieux et plus actifs”; “flexibles à l’émulation”; “se raffineront . . . se fortifieront”; “la qualité de l’amour des grands artistes français, la pureté de leurs ardeurs, la noblesse des conceptions” (Leblond, “La Réunion et son Musée”).  51. Premier Bulletin de Souscription (MLD, Album Léon Dierx); Le nouveau journal de l’île de la Réunion (14 December 1910): 1; letter from Bédier to Paul Boyer (14 April 1912) (MS NAF 18856, f. 185); Dictionnaire biographique 2:103–4. Celebrating the opening of the museum in 1911, the Leblonds classed Guist’hau among the most prestigious living creoles (La Réunion et Paris 6). Guist’hau and Bédier are both listed as founding honorary members of the Académie de l’Île de la Réunion (Bulletin de l’Académie de l’Île de la Réunion 1 [1913–14]): 20. The Leblonds dedicated their essay collection La France devant l’Europe to Guist’hau, with a statement of creole patriotism (v–vi).  52. Premier Bulletin de Souscription (MLD, Album Léon Dierx); “Le Musée de La Réunion,” La patrie créole (16–17 January 1911): 2; discussion of the committee’s work in Ah-koon and Duchêne 1:72–76; Cheval, “Souvenirs” 22–23.  53. Le nouveau journal de l’île de la Réunion (4 March 1911): 2.  54. Le nouveau journal de l’île de la Réunion (11 April 1913): 1–2; Le peuple (20

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October 1913); Ary Leblond to Hippolyte Foucque (16 August 1955), cited in Cheval, “Souvenirs” 35.  55. WLD, don fondateur no. 53. “Le musée s’enrichit,” La dépêche de la Réunion (26 October 1911): 2; La patrie créole (26 October 1911): 2; the essays are now held in the ADR (see chapter 3).  56. “C’est la littérature, tous le savent, qui nous a donné nos douces gloires— les Leconte de Lisle, les Léon Dierx, les Joseph Bédier, les Jean Ricquebourg— toutes célébrées et accrues par les Leblond”: Le nouveau journal de l’île de la Réunion (14 July 1911): 1; also La dépêche de la Réunion (19 July 1911): 2.  57. “On tient à présenter presque exclusivement à la Réunion des moulages gothiques qui accentuent, avec l’élégance et l’élancement de la foi, notre sentiment de la grâce, de la bonhomie et l’espièglerie jusqu’à travers la résignation et le mysticisme, l’intelligence et l’aménité” (Leblond, “La Réunion et son musée”).  58. Government pledge: Le nouveau journal de l’île de la Réunion (14 December 1910): 1. Figures: Greffet-Kendig 30–32.  59. Hugues Capet, 987–1987.  60. “Je m’oppose formellement à ce que vous y conduisiez ma fille qui pourrait être effrayée à la vue des énormes pièces montées qui représentent sous la vérandah, les saints des cathédrales de France. Que la vue des petites horreurs qui garnissent le Musée et en sont le plus bel ornement, soit épargnée à ma fillette, à moins que l’aumônier voulant donner une idée aux élèves de la laideur du péché mortel ne le compare aux tableaux” (La dépêche de la Réunion, 19 December 1913, 1); Ah-Koon and Duchêne on other criticisms (1:125–31).  61. Letter from Eugène Massinot (museum director) to Ary Leblond (December 1953), letter from Ary Leblond to Hippolyte Foucque (16 August 1955) (cited in Cheval, “Souvenirs” 33, 34–35); description of Paul et Virginie exhibit in Leblond, “Paul et Virginie aux colonies,” La vie (22 March 1913).  62. MLD, “Historique.” Ambroise Vollard had participated on the museum’s organizing committee (MLD, Album Léon Dierx).  63. Letter from Ary Leblond to Hippolyte Foucque (16 August 1955) (cited in Cheval, “Souvenirs” 35). A decade later, the museum building underwent a major restoration as part of the controversial “tricentennial” of 1965 (Le mémorial 7:65).  64. Cheval, “L’Art contemporain,” Les sept trésors de guerre 16; Maxim.  65. Cheval, Les sept trésors de guerre 17–18; one color photo in Warren, “How the Indian Ocean” and on http://www.cg974.fr/culture (accessed 8 July 2010).  66. “Les sept trésors de guerre de la Réunion,” Le journal de l’île de la Réunion (26 June 1994): 5; MLD, Dossier Sarkis.  67. Maxim; Ségelstein.  68. Africus 146.  69. “Objets orphelins, ils deviennent, grâce aux ailes en néon et à la structure métallique sur roulettes, des métaphores de la réconciliation du blanc et du noir,

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du grand et du petit, du profane et du sacré, du totémisme et du monothéisme, etc.” (letter from Cheval to Isabelle Mayet, Association française d’action artistique, Ministère des affaires étrangères, 13 February 1995) (MLD, Dossier Sarkis); also Cheval, Les sept trésors de guerre 31.  70. Cheval, Les sept trésors de guerre 41n37 (quoting from the Roman de Tristan en prose). Marimoutou notes a similar convergence between discussions of créolité and the roman colonial (in Enwezor 265–66).  71. Fleckner, Treasure Chests 13–20, 310n5; Von Drateln; Sarkis, Blackout 125, 127. Many of these projects juxtapose dissonant times and place — high tech lighting in medieval abbeys (Breerette; Sarkis, Le lustre), medieval sculpture in African dress (Sarkis, La sculpture, D’après et après). In 2009, Sarkis opened Litanies: nuit blanche in the Mosquée de Paris. See also http://www.sarkis.fr (accessed 8 July 2010).  72. Cousseau 9; also Rossignol.  73. “Kriegsschatz . . . ce que l’on découvre et dont on s’empare avant de s’en parer, en signe de victoire, comme témoignage de puissance” (“Les sept trésors de guerre de la Réunion,” Le journal de l’île de la Réunion, 26 June 1994); also Maxim (with quotes from Sarkis and Cheval).  74. “Les œuvres se déplacent avec leurs expériences. Les expériences deviennent la mémoire. Chaque œuvre a sa mémoire — qui s’enrichit perpétuellement d’un lieu à l’autre” (Sarkis, “Lexique” 42–43).  75. Fleckner, “Theatrum mundi” 133–34, Treasure Chests 20.  76. Sarkis, “Lexique” 42; Fleckner, Treasure Chests 13, 17, 20; J. Martin in Sarkis, Trois mise en scène 11.  77. “Quand tu enlèves [des objets] de leur cadre et . . . tu les amènes quelque part . . . c’est à ce moment là que la souffrance commence” (Sarkis, “Entretien” 61).  78. Rossignol, in Sarkis, Trois mises en scène 69; Fleckner, Treasure Chests 11–13.  79. Sarkis installations on this theme: Réserves accessibles (Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, 1979); Réserves, sans retour (Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 1980), Sarkis interprète le Musée Constantin Meunier (Bruxelles, 1989), Danse dans la salle Art Déco (Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1989) (also involving African statues). Discussion in Harding; Fleckner, Treasure Chests 13–14.  80. Sarkis and Cheval in Maxim; Cheval, Les sept trésors de guerre 15, 36; Ségelstein.  81. Cheval, Les sept trésors de guerre 25.  82. Sarkis, Sarkis 26.9.19380 110.  83. E.g., D. Picard. In Paris, the 150th anniversary of abolition (1998) celebrated achieved reconciliation, potentially impeding efforts to address ongoing social inequalities (Vergès, “Mémoires visuelles” 392–96). The anniversary has only been officially celebrated on Réunion since 1981 on December 20; since 2006, May 10 has been the official date of national commemoration (established by the

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Comité pour la Mémoire et l’Histoire de l’Esclavage, chaired since 2008 by Françoise Vergès; http://cpmne.fr; accessed 8 July 2010).  84. Rousse, “L’année 1956”; Viry; Lélé; Gauvin, “Créolisation” 76, 80; Eve, Le 20 Décembre 1848 165–71, 193–94, 205; Léger 48–55; Vellayoudom. On PerreauPradier’s violently neocolonial, anticommunist administration: Gauvin, Michel Debré (2006) 148–67; Rousse, Combats 2:47–72, 76–83, 112; Vergés, Monsters and Revolutionaries 138–39.  85. Vergès and Marimoutou 59. Also Marimoutou, “Le texte du maloya”; Fuma, “Aux origines.” Cheval dedicated the exhibition catalogue to Céline and Firmin Viry (Les sept trésors de guerre). In October 2009, UNESCO accepted Réunion’s petition to list maloya as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, in need of Urgent Safeguarding (http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich; accessed 8 July 2010). Music remains a catalyst for social critique (e.g., collecif la Fournaise in Témoignages, 5 July 2010).  86. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:269–70. Afterword

  1. Lionnet, “Reframing Baudelaire,” “Disease”; also Hulme on “locality.”   2. Fabella; Garraway 296; Munro; O’Callaghan 27; Shepard; Steyn 125.   3. Stoler, “Imperial Debris” 200.   4. Holsinger, Premodern Condition. On Foucault: Stoler, Race. On Derrida: Young, Postcolonialism 395–426; Lee Morrissey; Huffer. On the rather different point that Bédier presages poststructuralism, Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 116–22, 375–77, 554–59; “Relire.”   5. In Fathy, cited in Huffer 242n20.   6. E.g., Gründ (on tchiloli); Altschul and Davis; Ingham and Warren; Kabir and Williams; Holsinger, “Medieval studies.”   7. On Curtius: Glissant, Traité 92–193; Warren, “Relating Philology.” On empire: Davis; Holsinger, “Empire,” Neomedievalism.   8. Stoler, “Imperial Debris” 193–94.   9. Ibid. 196, 195; Augé proposes a rather different anthropology of ruins. Cf. also Ricoeur on forgetting and the philosophy of pardon.  10. “Deux siècles d’histoire de l’immigration en France”; “Ouverture.”  11. Jelen 114. Recent publications and conferences, however, seem to broaden the definition of immigration (e.g., May 2010, “Migrations et identités créoles dans l’outre-mer”). Meanwhile, “ruination” continues: in October 2010, hundreds of undocumented workers began occupying the CNHI to protest a government immigration agreement with their union.  12. Clifford; Dias, “Double Erasures”; Lebovics, Bringing the Empire Back Home 143–90; Price; Dominic Thomas; Westbrook. Several have drawn direct

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connections to the Third Republic’s colonial expositions (see chapter 2): De L’Estoile; Ruiz-Gómez.  13. “L’établissement public”; see De L’Estoile on the politics of historical time at the MQB (267–91, 330–31).  14. Westbrook 7.  15. De l’Estoile 267. Publicity materials repeatedly highlight “ancient” and “medieval” objects. Significantly, one of the last projects curated at the MAAO compared commemorative uses of skulls from medieval European reliquaries to contemporary Oceanic sculpture (“La mort n’en saura rien”).  16. Reproduced in Le Palais, Figures 32, 189, 210, 222. Cataloguing of the “Archives du Musée de la France d’outre-mer” has since made progress.  17. Colardelle 18, 32. Construction began in November 2009 (web 8 July 2010: http://www.musee-europemediterranee.org).  18. De L’Estoile 419–20. The MUCEM has received the “European” collections of the Musée de l’Homme while the “primitive” pieces have gone to the MQB, materializing racialized differences by literally separating “our humans” from “other humans” (Dias, “Double Erasures” 302n5). For 2013, an EU commission has designated Marseille the “European Capital of Culture.”  19. Colardelle 25–29. One of the MUCEM’s sites, the renovated Fort SaintJean, supports a layered history of colonial medievalism: the knights Hospitallers supported the Crusades from there in the twelfth century; French Legionnaires stopped there in the ninteenth century on their way to Africa.  20. Heroes of the Frontiers 9; “Aux frontières,” exhibit guide.  21. Colardelle 18.  22. Vergès and Marimoutou, “Introduction” (directors of the MCUR); D. Picard 307–9. In April 2010, the newly elected regional president Didier Robert cancelled the MCUR, as promised. Documents related to the project are no longer available on http://regionreunion.com; Robert announced a new cultural strategy on 9 July 2010. Dissension around the MCUR played a visible role in the election. In an ironic twist, communist leaders found themselves accused of “wasting” money on culture instead of fostering socioeconomic justice. See ongoing press commentary: http://clicanoo.re, http://www.lequotidien.re, and http:// temoignages.re (where Paul Vergés states that the MCUR will be built in Le Port).  23. Gauvin, “Créolité”; Marimoutou, “Langues étrangères.”

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Index

Aachen. See Aix-la-Chapelle abolition, xvi, xix, xxi, 59, 100, 238n43; December 20 anniversary on Réunion, 199, 209, 303n83. See also slavery Académie Française: Bédier’s colleagues, 59, 76, 81, 85, 172; Bédier’s election, xx, xxiii, 54, 77, 85, 93, 111, 113, 114, 135, 140, 144, 158, 160, 201; Bédier’s speeches about, 108–11, 154, 157, 208; Creole and, 196–98; prize awarded to Bédier, 144; Réunionnais members, xxi, xxii, 95, 109–10 Action Française, 80–81, 83, 85, 170; publication, 144, 266n64 Aden, 127, 128, 131 Aeneid, 11, 23. See also epic genre Africa: anthropology and, xxvii; art and, 217, 226, 229, 260n160, 303n71, 303n79; Bédier and, 111, 126, 246n94; colonialism and, xvi, 1, 5–8, 10, 19, 24, 133, 172, 305n19; epic genre and, 165, 176; at the Expositions, 33, 36, 43, 48, 63, 67–68, 70; literature and, xx, xxiii–xxv, 239n58; métissage and, xvii, 67–68, 203, 207, 232 Agadir Crisis, 7–8 Aix-la-Chapelle, 167, 185, 186, 190, 191 al-Andalus, 41, 176, 184, 294n56. See also Islam; Spain

Albany, Jean, xxv Alexandria, 175, 176, 181, 294n56 Algeria: Bédier and, 145; Chanson de Roland and, 171; colonial literature and, 239n60; as colony, 5, 6, 24, 207, 241n82, 241n1, 251n2, 300n42; at the Expositions, 41, 43, 49. See also North Africa Alliance Française, 78, 91 aloalo, 215, 218 Alsace: Bédier and, 21, 158–60, 170; at the Expositions, 71; its loss, xxviii, 1, 4–8, 13, 16–18; its recovery, xxviii, 5, 16–18, 47, 78, 144, 153, 159, 243n39; Réunion and, 4–5, 6, 13. See also Lorraine; provinces; revanche ancestors: ethnic history and, 18–19; French identity and, 35, 85, 122, 154, 159, 168–71, 203; nos ancêtres les Gaulois, 19, 97, 225. See also métissage; nation; terre majur Anderson, Benedict, 120–21 Angkor Wat, 53, 55–56, 63 Anglo-Norman dialect: of Chanson de Roland, 12, 142, 150, 152–53, 167–68; of Marie de France, 283n73; of Thomas’s Tristan, 133. See also French, medieval; French language; translation

· 361 ·

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INDEX

Anglo-Saxon, 133. See also Germanic culture Antilles. See Caribbean anti-Semitism, 76, 80–81, 86, 226, 266n69 Arabia, 127, 180, 185 Arabic language, 171, 179, 184–85 Arabs: as colonial subjects, 16, 57; in Fabliaux, 127, 128, 129; as French citizens, 172; in the Middle Ages, 171, 175–76, 190–92, 297n107 archeology, 19, 56, 63 architecture: at the Expositions, xxix, 26–27, 29–36, 38, 41, 50–54, 56, 61–64, 71–72; medieval, 257n115; of Paris, 112, 206; on Réunion, 51, 66, 100, 154, 204. See also art; museums; verandah Arconati-Visconti, la marquise, 80–82, 119, 124, 148, 150, 153, 262n31 aristocracy: authorship and, 23, 142–43, 145, 162–63, 167–68; Bédier and, 87–89, 94, 98–99, 111, 147; chivalry and, 94–95, 227; colonialism and, xviii–xix, 25, 30, 50–51, 77, 83, 87, 100, 145, 213, 227; medieval, 37, 100. See also chivalry; France, “ancient” Armorica. See Brittany art: Bédier and, 105; exhibitions, 36, 38, 62, 73–74, 290n187; the nation and, xxii, 95, 123, 143, 211–21, 227–30; postcolonial, 215–20, 226. See also architecture; modernism; museums; sculpture artisan, 41, 42, 62, 63, 66–71, 175, 176. See also handcrafts Artus, Louis, 47, 81, 140, 248n134, 299n31 Aryan, xxi, 18, 35, 97, 130, 227 Asia, xvii, 1, 5, 7, 30, 63, 67–68, 207, 213

assimilation, xvi, xxvii, 10, 46, 48, 67, 78, 118, 228, 236n11. See also “otherness”; “saming” association, 48, 61 Aude, 92, 179, 185–86, 191 Australia, 5, 104, 127, 128 Auvergne, 42, 71 Avenue Suffren, 32, 42, 46 Baligant, 175, 181–82, 184, 296n85, 297n106 barbarism: colonialism and, 2–3, 220, 226; Germany and, 3, 8, 10, 241n7; the Middle Ages and, xii, xxviii, 24, 85, 214; pedagogy and, 119, 144; politics and, 82. See also “otherness” Barquisseau, Raphaël, 88–89, 90–91, 97, 109, 268n87, 279n228 Barre, Raymond, xxvi Barrès, Maurice: Bédier and, xxix, 83– 86, 140, 239n63, 266n59; Blum and, 82, 87; Dreyfus Affair and, 80, 81; Leconte de Lisle and, xxi, 238n49; nationalism and, 4, 77, 83–86, 113, 159, 170, 250n147, 277n215; Renan and, 280n6, 292n35 Barthou, Louis, 85, 111, 144 Basque, 127, 128 Bastille, 32, 42 Baudelaire, Charles, xvii, xxi, 99, 239n63, 304n1 Becker, Philip, 143, 144, 286n120, 290n192 Bédier, Adolphe, xix, 60, 77, 79, 99, 100, 274n168, 283n70; his book, 87–88, 91–92, 93, 96, 100, 136–38, 146–49 Bédier, Adrien, 96–97, 115 Bédier, Édouard, 91, 94, 101, 103, 107, 138, 253n48, 268n88

INDEX

Bédier, Joseph: in Alsace, 158–60; anti-Germanism, 8, 21–25, 81, 82–83, 142–45, 149; arriving in Paris in 1881, xi, 112; arriving on Réunion in 1870, xix, 77–78, 100; blond hair and, 91–92, 98–100, 111, 133, 158–59; as Breton aristocracy, 87–88, 98–99, 111, 147; centennial of birth, xxv, 155, 201–4; chivalry and, 22, 85, 87–100, 110–11, 125, 135–36, 155, 203; creole identity and, xx–xxvii, xxix, xxxi, 27–28, 37, 53–55, 61, 74, 80, 92–93, 101, 108, 157, 195, 196–210, 213; Creole language and, 109, 114, 115, 154, 157, 160, 196, 197–98, 199; desk from Bourbon, 109, 140, 141, 290n188, 300n35; editor of Revue de France, xxiv, 158; the eleventh century and, 59, 93, 109, 116, 121–22, 143–44, 149, 161, 169, 171, 213, 223; at the Expositions, 26–29, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 46–48, 53–55, 57, 59–61, 65, 73–75; family history, xix, xxi, 60, 94, 76– 81, 96–97, 201; funeral, 79; on genius of individual authors, 23, 74, 122, 124–25, 132, 142–43, 145, 149, 162–63, 167–68; German language and, xx, 104, 107; German literature and, 123, 132, 134, 204–5, 286n122; German philology and, 117–18, 122, 126, 133, 151–53; German romanticism and, 123–24; German war crimes and, xx, 22, 135; in Germany, 21, 28, 104–7; his father’s book, 87–88, 91–93, 96, 100, 136–38, 145–49; his school essays from Saint-Denis, 54, 89–90, 211, 213; homesickness, 100, 103–9, 113–16, 150, 153–55, 161, 163, 223; housing project name, 206, 221; indigenous tribes and, 16, 126; name of schools, 206–7, 221; name of

363

streets, 200–201, 204–6, 221; name on monuments, 201–2, 208–10, 232– 33; as playwright, 22, 46–47, 122, 140, 142, 249n139, 283n68, 288n155; as poet, xx–xxvii, 93, 139–40, 196, 198–99, 204, 213; slavery and, xix, 89, 99–100; on style, 21, 23, 105, 134–35, 152–53, 167–70; on sympathy in criticism, 122–25, 134–36, 138, 161–62; on telepathy, 109–10, 112, 134, 148; translation and, xx, xxiv, xxx, 23, 61, 73, 74, 89, 113–14, 132–41, 142, 151, 166–71, 182, 198–99; trip to Réunion in 1887, xix, 28, 102–5, 113, 127–32; in the United States, 21, 261n10, 263n31, 279n229; as war hero, xx, 24, 140. See also Chanson de Roland and Bédier; Fabliaux; Légendes épiques; philology; Tristan et Iseut Bédier, Philippe-Achille, xix, 6, 77 bee, symbol of imperialism, 59, 109 Belloc, Hilaire, 133 Bénard, Léonus, 49, 67 Bénard, Miss, 67–68 Beowulf, 11. See also epic genre Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. See Paul et Virginie Bernhardt, Sarah, 47 Béroul, author of a Tristan romance, 134 Bertin, Antoine, 48, 59 Bible, 119, 198 Bismarck, 3 Bissette, Cyrille, 96 Bizarelli, Eugénie, 81, 101, 113, 170, 206, 249n137, 261n10 Bizarelli, Louis, 81, 207, 264n41 blanchitude, xvii blond hair: Bédier’s, 91–92, 98–100, 111, 133, 158–59; Charlemagne’s, 36; Saracens’, 173 Blum, Léon, xxix, 73, 74, 82, 86

364

INDEX

Boeckh, August, 117–18 Bois de Vincennes, 47, 253n49 Boissonade, Prosper, 171 Bourbon dynasty, xiv–xv, 88, 153–54, 208, 213, 231. See also Louis XIV Bourgin, Hubert, 86, 261n4 Bouvet, Pierre, 48 Bouvier, Bernard, 274n163, 274n176 Bramimonde, 168, 185, 186, 191 Brasillach, Robert, 86, 144 Breton: Bédier and, 87–88, 98–99, 111, 147; Celticism and, 73, 97; ethnicity, 5, 132; language, 97, 199; Réunion and, 49, 97, 111. See also Brittany; Celticism Britain, xxi, 7, 124, 127, 128; indenture and, xvi, 126, 219, 232; Indian Ocean and, xv, 29, 90, 129, 207, 277n208, 284n96; the Middle Ages and, 11, 18, 59, 133, 152, 231, 250n148 Brittany: Bédier and, 87, 111, 113; colonialism and, 71, 132–33; Fabliaux and, 126, 129; national identity and, 121, 159–60; Réunion and, 67, 97, 111, 227, 271n137. See also Breton; Celticism; provinces Brunet, Auguste, 79, 139, 270n119; Bédier and, 79, 157, 158, 274n160, 289n184; at the Expositions, 65, 259n141; Leblonds and, 239n60 Brunet, Louis, 6, 65 Brunetière, Ferdinand, 81, 124, 131, 139, 251n153, 273n156 Cairo, 32, 42 Cameroon, 27 Camus, Albert, 205, 268n87 Canada, 13, 126 Capetians, 88, 169, 213, 231. See also Louis IX, saint Cap Gardafui, 127, 128

Caribbean, xvii, xx, 96, 98, 159, 166, 200, 259n141, 271n137. See also Guadeloupe; Guyane; Martinique; “old colonies” Carolingian, 109, 169, 176, 231 Catholicism, 3, 20, 55, 76, 139, 143, 203, 218. See also Bible; religion Célestin, Frédérick, 199 Celticism: Bédier and, 111; creole identity and, 97–98, 133, 155, 156, 283n70; ethnicity and, 18; medieval French literature and, xxx, 73, 129, 132–33, 246n94, 247n108; Vercingétorix and, 94. See also Breton; Brittany Centre des Métiers, 63, 68, 70 Centre Régional, 63, 71 Centre Rural, 63, 70 Césaire, Aimé, xxiv, xxvi Champdemerle, Paul, xxv, 276n207 Champion, Pierre, 144 Chanson de Roland, xxx–xxxi, 12–25, 47, 57, 92, 108, 161–62, 164–93, 202, 217, 218, 229; Anglo-Norman dialect of, 12, 142, 150, 152–53, 167–68; colonialism and, 13–16, 20, 24, 36, 85, 92, 146, 150–62, 164, 166–72; edited by Cesare Segre, 161, 162; edited by Francisque Michel, 12, 15, 152, 244n52; edited by Ian Short, 161, 162, 292n33, 296n85, 296n102; edited by Joseph Duggan, 162; edited by Léon Gautier, 12, 20, 92, 150–51, 158; ethnicity and, 167, 168, 175, 177; German philology and, 12, 15, 17, 47, 153; pedagogy and, xxviii, xxxi, 19–25, 26, 36, 92, 141, 150, 151, 200, 231; translations of, xxiv, xxx, 20, 23, 73, 142, 150–51, 162, 166–71, 182, 189, 231. See also Digby 23; epic genre; Légendes épiques; Roland

INDEX

Chanson de Roland and Bédier, xxx, 84–85, 105, 108, 132, 133, 141, 149, 166–72; dedication to Bourbon, xxx, 153–61, 168, 169; edition, xxx, 23, 57, 73, 92, 110, 124–25, 142, 150–62, 166–68, 201, 207; nationalism and, 21–25, 153, 159–61, 164, 166, 193; read under a mango tree, xii, 20, 25, 36, 108, 150, 201–2; received as school prize, 92, 150–52, 157–58, 162, 167; translation, xxiv, xxx, 23, 73, 142, 151, 166–71, 182 Charlemagne: Bédier’s assessment of, 146, 159; as blond, 36; in Chanson de Roland, xxx, 36, 164, 167, 168, 174–76, 178–93, 292n27; at the Expositions, 35, 42; nationalism and, 14, 15, 18, 19, 120, 121; postcolonial theater and, 226 Charles-Roux, Jules, 41, 46, 47, 255n83 Chateaubriand, xxiv, 111 Château Morange, 51, 52, 293n44 Chaudron, Le, 204–5, 206 Chaudron, Villa du, 51, 52 Chavannes, Édouard, 142–43, 280n10 Cheval, François, 215–16, 218, 219 China, 89, 127, 128, 131, 232 chivalry: Bédier and, 22, 85, 87–100, 110–11, 125, 135–36, 155, 203; colonialism and, xxix, 10, 30, 77, 85, 86, 87–100, 102, 125, 140, 158, 203, 211, 213, 220–21; Leblonds and, 94–95; in medieval literature, xxx, 135–36, 140, 164, 181; nationalism and, 24, 85; racism and, 90–92, 100, 110–11, 125, 155, 227. See also aristocracy; France, “ancient” Christianity: art and, 40, 213–15, 227; Chanson de Roland and, xxx–xxxi, 155, 164, 165–66, 168, 172–80, 182–85, 190–93, 297n107; Fabliaux and, 130;

365

pedagogy and, 89, 93; slavery and, 99. See also religion Cilaos, 108 Cité Nationale d’Histoire de l’Immigration, 228–29, 230, 232. See also Palais de la Porte Dorée class relations: anti-bourgeois attitudes, 77, 88, 282n53; colonialism and, 48, 91, 96; republicanism and, 80, 88. See also communists; socialism Clovis, 213 Cochinchina, 146 Cohen, Gustave: Bédier and, 98, 158–59, 160, 276n205, 290n190; medieval theater and, 249n139; politics and, 267n74, 270n115 Collège de France: Bédier as administrator, 77, 157, 196, 249n136; Bédier as professor, xx, 22, 76, 142, 158, 205, 265n50; four hundredth anniversary of, 54, 112; Gaston Paris as professor, 12, 263n31 colonial literature, xx–xxv, 24, 155, 157, 206 Commune (1871), 3, 80 communists, xxvi, xxvii, 195–96, 220, 231–32, 240n77. See also class relations Compagnie des Indes, xiv, 207 Congo, 5, 7, 8 Constantinople, 175, 294n57 conversion, xxx, 14, 173, 185–86, 190, 191, 226. See also religion Corneille, Pierre, 21, 122 Cornu, Henri, xxvi, 202–3, 299n21, 300n44 Corsica, 127, 128, 199 courtly love, 94, 134–36, 140, 150, 198–99, 225, 294n53 creole, definitions of, xii–xiii, xvii–xix, 164–66, 173, 180, 181, 224–25

366

INDEX

Creole languages, xxxi, 97, 99, 128, 166, 202, 205, 215, 220; case créole, 51, 64, 66, 154, 157–58, 198; promotion of, 195–200, 201; translations into, xxvi–xxvii, 114, 115, 198–99; used by Bédier, 101–2, 109, 114, 115, 154, 157, 160, 196, 197–98, 199 créolie, xvii, xxv, 196, 203 Crusades: colonialism and, 10, 60, 133, 229; epic genre and, 15, 23–24, 36, 42, 55, 57, 84, 143, 145, 171, 191–92, 250n144; exoticism and, xxiv; at the Expositions, 36, 42, 55–60, 229, 257n113; fabliau genre and, 126, 129; as French creation, 14, 17, 23, 36, 55–60, 83, 93, 95; modern politics and, 24, 83–84, 231, 250n144, 305n19; Réunion and, xii, 298n9. See also eleventh century; religion Curtius, Ernst Robert, 226 Dahomey, 8, 46 Damas, Léon, xxiv Daudet, Léon, 83, 144, 271n135, 286n122 Dauphiné, 113, 160, 170–71 Debré, Jean-Louis, 301n46 Debré, Michel, 203–4, 207–8, 240n82 deco style, 51. See also Palais de la Porte Dorée Deloncle, Pierre, 57, 59 De Mahy, François-Césaire: Bédier and, 29, 76–78, 101, 204; colonialism and, 6–7, 109, 259n149; Dreyfus Affair and, 80, 81, 85; at the Expositions, 54, 65; founding of Third Republic and, xxviii, 3–4, 159; Jeanne d’Arc and, 265n52; Réunionnais politics and, 76, 78–80, 86, 104, 139, 203, 238n43, 261n6, 268n85

Demaison, André, 48–50, 254n74, 255n95 Denis, saint, 92 départementalisation, xv–xvi, xxxi, 195, 202, 204, 214–15; legal effects, 199–200, 205, 207; Third Republic and, 6, 63, 78 Déroulède, Paul, 8 Derrida, Jacques, 225–26 D’Esme, Jean, xxiv, 65, 157–58, 239n63, 290n187 diaspora: Bédier and Réunionnais in Paris, xx, 76–87, 95–101, 154–59, 211, 213, 221, 223, 232; melancholy and, 103, 105–7, 114; Réunionnais at the Expositions, 29, 39, 47, 74–75; swarming bees and, 59, 109; telepathy and, 109–10, 112, 134, 148. See also diversity; exile; homesickness Diefenbacher, Alfred, 203–4, 208, 220, 299n21, 301n46 Diefenbacher, Michel, 301n46 Dierx, Léon: Bédier and, 212, 213, 227; as creole poet, xx–xxiii, xxv, 135, 139, 196, 198, 203; at the Expositions, 48, 54, 65 Digby 23 (Bodleian Library): AngloNorman language of, 12, 23, 167, 174; dating of, 171, 174, 296n91; editing of, 151–53, 161–62, 164, 167–68, 231, 239n62, 288n160, 296n102; moving it to France, 15. See also Chanson de Roland diversity: Chanson de Roland and, xxxi, 164–67, 169, 172, 231; national identity and, 23, 61–63, 67, 82–83, 84, 159–60, 194, 224; of Réunion, xvii, 194, 220–21, 231–32. See also diaspora; genealogy; métissage Dodu, Juliette, 48, 54

INDEX

douce France, 24, 84, 108, 169, 179, 292n30 Dreyfus, Alfred, 76, 80–81, 261n3 Du Bellay, Joachim, 114, 116 Durendal, 92, 173, 180–81, 182, 183, 192, 293n49 Dürer, Albrecht, 105–7 Du Tertre Le Cocq, Denis-Godefroy: as Bédier’s stepfather, xix, 77, 94, 131, 274n169; dedicatee of Tristan et Iseut, xxx, 138–39; as politician, xxii, 10, 76, 78–79, 104, 139, 213, 262n14 Du Tertre Le Cocq, Marie-Céline, xix, 77, 78, 94, 100, 131, 139, 262n15, 274n159, 274n169 Du Tertre Le Cocq, Maurice, 79, 139 École Normale Supérieure, 21, 28, 38, 76, 283n68 education. See pedagogy Egypt, 27, 32, 42 Eiffel Tower, 32, 35, 206, 257n123 eleventh century: 175, 176, 179, 184, 229; Crusades and, 36, 55, 59, 93, 94, 109, 121; origin of France, 59, 93, 94, 109, 116, 121–22, 143–44, 149, 161, 169, 213, 223 England. See Britain English language, 102, 128, 133, 140, 189, 283n73 epic genre, xx, xxx, 2, 26, 125, 130, 141–49, 150–62, 164–93, 225, 226, 230–31, 251n153, 281n32; at the Expositions, 41, 42, 55, 57, 73; nationalism and, 11–25, 83–84, 89, 92, 95, 122, 203; orality and, 12, 142, 145–49, 162, 165. See also Aeneid; Beowulf; Chanson de Roland; Iliad; Légendes épiques; Nibelungenlied; orality

367

Esplanade des Invalides, 29–32, 33 esprit gaulois, 46, 130. See also fabliau genre ethnicity: Bédier and, 98, 161; Chanson de Roland and, 167, 168, 175, 177; colonialism and, 39–40, 49–50; Germany and, 21–22; nations and, 1, 11–12, 70, 120, 223. See also genealogy; métissage; purity ethnography: colonialism and, 29, 57, 61; museums and, 5, 36, 59; nationalism and, 130, 230; on Réunion, xvii, 40, 66–68. See also genealogy; métissage etymology, 168–71, 179, 184–85 exile: Bédier and, xxix, 100–116, 117, 125, 136, 147, 163; Bédier family and, xix, 87; poetry and, xxi–xxii, 114, 116, 165, 274n168; politics and, xxvi, 4, 6, 89, 204, 256n98, 293n44, 300n38. See also diaspora; homesickness exoticism, xxiv, 111, 124, 182; at the Expositions, 26–29, 75; at the 1889 Exposition, 31, 32; at the 1900 Exposition, 38, 39, 41, 43, 46; at the 1931 Exposition, 49, 53, 56, 60; at the 1937 Exposition, 71 Exposition Coloniale, Marseille (1922), xxiii, 54 Exposition Coloniale, Paris (1931), 26, 47–60, 126, 157, 290n187; Bédier exhibit and, xxiii, 48, 53–55; compared to Musée du Quai Branly, 304n12; compared to 1900 Exposition, 254n74; compared to 1937 Exposition, 63, 64, 65, 73, 74, 258n125, 258n138, 259n145; Germany and, 5, 27; Leblonds and, xxiv, 196, 197, 206. See also Musée des Colonies

368

INDEX

Exposition Internationale, Paris (1937), xxiii, 26, 27, 60–74, 258n127 Exposition Réunionnaise, SaintDenis (1925), xxiii, 54 Expositions Universelles, xxiii, xxiv, xxix, 5, 26–75; art and, 36, 38, 62, 73–74, 290n187; Bédier and, 26–29, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 46–48, 53–55, 57, 59–61, 65, 73–75; Germany and, 27, 47; medieval exhibits, 26–28, 29–32, 35, 36, 37, 41–42, 43, 44, 46, 55–60, 68, 71–73, 260n161; military exhibits, 29–30, 37, 38, 42, 45; oliphants, 36, 37, 41, 42, 56–57, 73; Paris city seal, 36–38, 42, 61, 62, 68; regionalism, 4, 61–74; Réunion and, 27–28, 29–30, 38–41, 48–55, 56, 57, 59–60, 61, 63–69, 126, 157 Exposition Universelle (1889), 26, 28–37, 38, 41, 42, 60, 61, 68, 73, 246n94, 254n74 Exposition Universelle (1900), 26, 27, 37–47, 48, 62, 66, 73, 90, 258n125, 258n127 fabliau genre, 130–31, 142, 163, 225; colonialism and, 125, 126, 127–28, 130, 132; at the Expositions, 41; orality and, 127–28, 131, 148–49. See also esprit gaulois; jongleur Fabliaux (Bédier), xxx, 41, 125–32, 141, 143, 201, 286n117; colonial memory and, 127–32, 147, 148; critique of Indian origins, 125–26, 130, 132, 133; editing and, 288n160; nationalism and, 46, 125, 130–31, 142, 171 factory worker from Réunion, xi–xii, xxvii, 154, 194, 233 faldestoed, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181–82, 184, 296n85

fascism, 27, 86. See also Nazism ferns, 29, 67, 105, 107, 108–9 Ferry, Jules, 5 feudal, 72, 173, 179, 182, 185–89, 295n77 Flaubert, Gustave, 3, 241n6 Foerster, Wendelin, 151–52 folk, 123–24, 142–43. See also orality; romanticism folklore, 71, 73, 146, 273n151 foreign, xxxi, 19, 102, 163, 169; the Expositions and, 27, 29, 38, 39, 49, 74; Germany and, 10, 11–12, 107, 122; literature and, 124–25, 132, 142, 147, 152–53, 171, 175–77, 183; provinces and, 5. See also “otherness”; xenophobia Fort-Dauphin, 146, 209 Foucque, Hippolyte, xxv, 93, 155, 157– 58, 201, 204, 212, 255n89, 277n213 France: as father, 153–54, 169–70; “greater,” 161, 163, 169; as mother, 93, 107–10, 114, 208, 245n76; as “sweet,” 24, 84, 108, 169, 179, 292n30. See also Gaul; nation; patrie France, “ancient”: colonialism and, 47, 55–60, 145; at the 1889 Exposition, 29–32, 35, 36, 37; at the 1900 Exposition, 41–42, 43, 44, 46; at the 1931 Exposition, 55–60; at the 1937 Exposition, 68, 71–73; at the Expositions, 26–28; nationalism and, xxiv, xxviii, 1–25, 86, 97, 143, 159–60, 164; preserved on Réunion, 39, 55, 89, 97, 110–11, 131, 139, 154, 162, 194, 196, 216. See also aristocracy; chivalry; Gaul; nation Franco-Prussian war: Chanson de Roland and, 11–25, 153; colonialism and, 2–5, 9; medievalism and, 2–5, 8, 83, 121, 125, 200; siege of Paris, xxi, 3, 11, 12, 22, 100; Third Republic

INDEX

and, xxviii, 27, 109, 159, 170. See also Germany Franks, xxx–xxxi, 12, 19, 47, 57, 155, 172, 173–93 French, medieval, 12, 23, 133, 151–53, 162, 166, 169, 177, 285n103; modernized, xx, 47, 73, 87, 133–36, 139–40, 166–72, 239n63, 250n144, 254n79, 260n161, 283n68. See also AngloNorman dialect; translation French language: aristocratic style and, 23; Bédier and, xxiii; 20, 89–90, 109, 128, 135, 153, 167–68; colonialism and, xx, 78, 131; Creole and, xvii, 101–2, 109, 157, 196–200, 205; Deixonne law and, 199–200; dialects, 99, 120, 152–53; provincial accent, 99. See also Anglo-Norman dialect; Occitan; translation Fribourg, 21, 28, 101, 274n159 fur, xxxi, 173–77, 191; marten, 191; sable, 175–76, 191 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis, 16–19, 133, 145, 159, 170, 247n115 Gamaleya, Boris, xxvi–xxvii, 297n4 Gambetta, Léon, 3, 5, 6 Ganelon: his trial, 186–93; Marsile and, 175–77, 184, 294n53; as traitor, 171, 178, 180, 183; Valdabron and, 185 Garnier, Charles, 32–33, 35 Garros, Roland, 10, 48, 54, 89, 101 Garsault, A. G., 38–39, 66 Gasparin, Lucien, 79, 139, 213, 270n119 Gaul, 12, 19–20, 70, 97, 130, 144, 225, 296n93. See also ancestors; esprit gaulois; France; France, “ancient” Gautier, Léon: on chivalry, 267n79; criticized by Bédier, 21, 150–53; his Chanson de Roland, 12, 20, 92,

369

150–53, 158, 249n140, 291n202, 292n25, 292n30, 296n85; nationalism and, 15–17,19, 21, 23, 24, 167, 247n115; pedagogy and, 20 Gauvin, Axel, xxvi–xxvii, 196–98, 199, 200, 232 Gauvin, Robert, xxvi–xxvii, 298n12 genealogy: Bédier and, 139, 145–47, 223; creole identity and, 50–51, 90–91, 94, 96–97, 108, 110–11, 147; literary, xxi, xxv, xxvii, xxx; national identity and, 16–20, 22, 70, 85, 154, 168–71, 213; philology and, 130, 140, 152. See also ancestors; ethnography; feudal; métissage; nation; purity Germanic culture, xxx, 245n81; in England, 133; in the fifth century, 3, 10, 12–13, 15, 16–18, 19, 21, 121, 126, 142–45, 149, 170 German language, 104, 107, 124, 132 Germany, 18, 124, 126; Bédier living there, 21, 28, 104–7; colonialism and, 3, 5, 7–10, 27, 47, 172; ethnicity and, 21–22; at the Expositions, 27, 47; germanophilie, 8, 21, 123; patriotism and, 170–71; philology and, 1, 11–12, 13, 15, 17, 20–22, 117–18, 122, 126, 130, 133, 142–44, 151–53; rivalries with France, 1, 6–8, 27, 47, 170, 172; as uncivilized, xxviii, 2, 3, 8, 10, 13, 16, 18, 95. See also Alsace; Bédier, Joseph; Franco-Prussian war; Goethe; Lorraine; Nazism; revanche; Wagner, Richard; World War I; World War II Glissant, Édouard, 165–66, 217, 226, 278n220 Goethe, 123, 198 Grand-Serre, Le, 113, 170–71, 206–7 Grappe, Georges, 111, 144

370

INDEX

Greece, xxi, 33 Guadeloupe, xv, 159, 259n151, 301n46; at the Expositions, 38, 40, 49, 50, 53; as “old colony,” 3, 7, 40, 224 Guineman, 182, 183, 184, 185, 192 Guist’hau, Gabriel, 212–13, 276n205, 301n51 Guyane, xv, 49, 50, 260n152; as “old colony,” 3, 7, 40, 224 Guyau, Jean-Marie, 122–23 Haidu, Peter, 187, 192 Halle (Germany), 21, 105 handcrafts, 33, 41, 61–63, 66–67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 179. See also artisan Hanotaux, Gabriel, 59, 81, 144, 243n37, 271n135 Hart, Robert Edward, 101, 135 Haussmann, Georges-Eugène (baron), 26–27, 37 Henry II, 231, 283n73 Heredia, José-Maria de, 81, 238n43 Herr, Lucien, 81, 249n138, 261n170 Hindu, 49, 232. See also India; orientalism Histoire de l’Habitation Humaine, 32–33 historiography, 221–24; anti-Germanic, 16–20; of editing, 151; the nation and, 120–25, 132, 142, 170; republicanism and, 2–3, 83, 225; romantic, xxvii, 122–24, 130 Holy Land, 56. See also Crusades homeland. See ancestors; France; Gaul; patrie; nation homesickness: of Bédier, 100, 103–9, 113–16, 150, 153–55, 161, 163, 223; in Chanson de Roland, 192–93; of creoles, xxi–xxii, 39, 65. See also diaspora; exile; nostalgia Horace, 113–15, 126

Hôtel des Invalides, 29, 32 Houat, Louis, 270n123 Hugo, Victor, xxi, xxii, 241n6 Iliad, 13, 251n153. See also epic genre indenture: on Réunion; xvi, 126, 219, 232; as threat from Germany, 8 India: Chanson de Roland and, 176; colonialism and, 16, 89, 146; creole poetry and, xxi, 282n52; Fabliaux and, xxx, 46, 125–32; Germany compared to, 8; Réunion and, xvi, 96, 232. See also Hindu; orientalism Indian Ocean, xi, xiv, 136, 154, 159, 223, 232, 245n81; Bédier and, 89, 103, 125, 128–32; Creole and, 200; French culture and, 29, 48, 49, 211–13; poetry and, xxv Indochina, 5, 63, 89, 126, 213 Islam: al-Andalus and, 293n51, 294n56, 297n107; Chanson de Roland and, 173, 175, 176, 179, 184, 192; colonialism and, 171–72, 258n129; ignorance of, 293n40; Réunion and, 232. See also religion Italy, 3, 18, 59, 127, 128, 159, 200 ivory, xxxi, 173–74, 176–84. See also oliphant Jaurès, Jean, xxix, 76, 81–82, 83, 87, 144. See also socialism Jeanne d’Arc, xv, 32, 42, 83, 94, 97, 255n89, 266n59 jongleur, 143; from Mauritius, 127–32, 134, 147, 148 Judaism, 126 judicium dei, 92, 186–91 Kervéguen family, 39, 78, 227 Krak des Chevaliers, 56, 72

INDEX

Labbé, Edmond, 61, 64, 66–67, 68, 72, 73, 74, 259n144 Lacaussade, Auguste, 48, 273n150 Lacaze, Lucien (amiral): at the Académie Française, 85, 109–10; Bédier and, 78, 203, 274n160, 277n211; at the Expositions, 48, 54; and the Villa du Chaudron, 256n98 Lachmann, Karl, 118 Lanson, Gustave, 81, 244n67, 249n138, 283n68 Lasserre, Pierre, 144, 248n130 Latin language: Bédier translating, 89, 114–15; creole identity and, 93, 102, 114–15, 153–54, 157; at the Expositions, 257n114; French and, 23, 168–69, 171, 184–85 Lavisse, Ernest, 11, 19, 81, 249n138, 263n39 Lebel, Roland, xxiv–xv Leblond, Ary: art and, 214–15, 257n120, 260n160, 300n37; colonial literature and, 206; Paul et Virginie and, 34, 257n120 Leblond, Marius: Bédier and, 98, 126, 267n75, 267n77, 272n144, 275n172, 283n70, 298n6; colonial literature and, 239n56, 267n79, 282n52; creole identity and, 272n146, 273n151; the Expositions and, 67; portrait at the Musée Léon Dierx, 217 Leblond, Marius and Ary: art and, 107, 211–15, 216; Bédier and, xix, xxiii, 54, 155–58, 196–98, 201, 204, 212, 239n63, 280n6; on chivalry, 94–95; colonial literature and, xx, xxi, xxii– xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, 24, 136, 203, 232, 240n80, 264n39, 273n149, 275n183; on creole identity, xviii, xxii, 97–98, 109, 164, 195, 212, 253n51, 273n150, 274n160, 278n220, 290n187; the

371

Expositions and, 54, 59–60, 65, 259n142; Germany and, 9–10, 243n49; the Middle Ages and, 60, 94, 211, 213–14, 280n23; Paul et Virginie and, 60, 136, 214; politics and, 79, 159, 244n57; racism and, 91, 95, 98; Réunion as “second France” and, 49, 211–12 Leconte de Lisle, Charles-Marie: compared to Bédier, xxv, 135, 139, 196, 203, 213, 266n70, 277n211, 282n52, 283n70; as creole poet, xx–xxiii, xxv, xxvi, 99, 111, 198, 203, 205, 232, 240n80, 241n6, 255n89, 264n39, 275n183; at the Expositions, 40–41, 48, 54, 59, 65, 259n142; métissage and, 96; promoted by the Leblonds, xviii, xxii; Réunionnais politics and, xxv–xxvii, 204, 215, 267n79 Légendes épiques (Bédier), xxx, 83, 84, 139, 141–49, 150, 201, 257n116, 263n31, 292n27; as anti-German, 21–22, 142, 145, 149; as anti-Romantic, 124, 149, 246n104, 281n27; nationalism and, 125, 141–42, 158, 169, 171; role of colonial memory, xxx, 145–49, 161. See also Chanson de Roland; Chanson de Roland and Bédier; epic genre Légion d’Honneur, 157, 305n19 Le Goffic, Charles, 111 Lélé, Granmoun, 215, 220 Lemaître, Jules, 81, 238n49 Lenient, Charles, 12–17, 19, 21, 23, 130, 153, 246n95, 248n131 Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, 7 lieu de mémoire, 195, 217. See also Nora, Pierre Ligue de la Patrie Française, 80 Loire valley, 101, 114

372

INDEX

Lorraine: its loss, xxviii, 1, 4–8, 13, 16–18; its recovery, xxviii, 47, 78, 153, 159, 243n39; national identity and, 4, 169, 170. See also Alsace; provinces; revanche Lot, Ferdinand, 81, 292n30, 293n42 Loti, Pierre, xxiii–xxiv Louis IX, saint, xi–xii, xiv, 56, 94, 208. See also Capetians Louis XIV, xxiii, 5, 37, 88. See also Bourbon dynasty Lyautey, Hubert (maréchal), 10, 53, 59, 172, 257n112 Lycée de Saint-Denis: Bédier as alumnus, 92–93, 103, 107, 114, 157, 300n34; Bédier as student, 20, 89–90, 155, 158, 213; creole teachers and, xxii, 88–93, 103, 253n48; Madagascar and, 243n39. See also Barquissau, Raphaël; Bédier, Édouard; Foucque, Hippolyte; pedagogy Lycée Louis-le-Grand, xx, 101, 112, 119, 120 Madagascar, xiv, xxv; Bédier family and, xix, 6, 77, 146; at the Expositions, 40, 56, 256n97; French colonialism and, xxi, 2, 10, 104, 172, 212, 229; Germany and, 9, 243n39; métissage and, 209, 259n149; postcolonial art and, 215–20; Réunionnais colonialism and, xv, xix, xxviii, 6–7, 40, 77, 98, 259n149, 300n38; slave trade and, 209, 300n38. See also Malagasy Maison des Civilisations et de l’Unité Réunionnaise, 231–32 Malagasy, xvi, xxi, 49, 96, 207, 215–20. See also Madagascar Mâle, Émile, 105, 249n138, 252n24, 257n115, 265n52, 275n184

maloya, xxvi, 215, 220, 232 mango tree, Bédier’s, xii, 20, 25, 36, 108, 150, 201–2 Maran, René, xxiii–xxiv, 239n58, 242n21 Maréorama, 43, 47 Mareschal de Bièvre, Georges, 99, 158, 160, 290n187 Marie de France, 111, 283n73 Marimoutou, Carpanin, 220, 232, 291n2, 303n70, 305n22 Marseille, xiv, xxiii, 43, 54, 56, 103, 128, 230–31 Marsile: Charlemagne and, 184, 189, 190–91, 297n108; Ganelon and, 174–77, 183, 184, 186; his faldestoed, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181–82, 184, 296n85. See also Saracens Martigues, 127, 128 Martinique, xv, xxvi, 96, 242n13, 260n160; at the Expositions, 40, 53, 67; as “old colony,” 3, 7, 40, 224 Maugain, Gabriel, 159–60 Mauritanie, 158 Mauritius, xiv, 29, 101, 127–32, 136–38, 206, 207, 236n13 Maurras, Charles, xxix, 76, 81, 85–86, 239n63, 249n137 Mediterranean, 43, 47, 175, 179, 230, 268n87 Melanesia, 199 Ménéhouarne, 87, 111 Mérimée, Prosper, 27, 89–90 Merovingians, 16, 94, 109, 213 Mèt ansanm, 198, 199, 201 métissage, xii; Bédier and, 95–100; beauty contest of, 67–68, 69; Chanson de Roland and, 172; colonialism and, 67, 194, 229; creole definitions and, xvii, 164; Europe and, 17–18; intolerance for, 83, 98–99, 118, 125, 132, 168, 203,

INDEX

207; in politics, 79, 139, 208, 272n140; Réunion and, xvi–xix, 90–92, 209, 211, 223, 232. See also diversity Mexico, 33, 145, 229 Meyer, Paul, 11, 81, 286n117, 286n120 Michaëlsson, Karl, 144 Michel, Francisque, 12, 15, 152, 244n52 Michelet, Jules, 105, 106, 123 Mille, Pierre, xxiv, 239n58, 239n60, 239n63, 242n21, 259n149, 290n187 Ministry of War, xx, 5, 22, 29–31, 42, 85 mission civilisatrice, xxvii, 2, 14, 16, 19, 20, 28, 29, 55, 78, 180 modernism, xxix, 51, 53, 61–74, 119– 25, 206 “Mohicans,” 8, 15 monarchy. See Bourbon dynasty; Capetian; Carolingian; Merovingian; royalism Monod, Émile, 30 Monod, Gabriel, 11, 81, 263n39 Moors, 41, 176, 293n43. See also Saracens Morand, Paul, 5, 251n7, 253n43, 266n69 Morocco, xxiv, 7–8, 10, 71, 172, 256n98, 287n133, 293n44. See also North Africa Mosquée de Paris, 172 Müller, Lucian, 102 Müller, Theodor, 152, 153, 161, 296n102 Munjoie, 92, 183 Musée d’Art Moderne, 73 Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer, 300n37. See also Palais de la Porte Dorée Musée de l’Homme, 72, 229 Musée de Rouen, 57 Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, 229. See also Palais de la Porte Dorée Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerrané, 230–31, 232

373

Musée des Colonies, 56–60, 73, 205, 228, 230. See also Palais de la Porte Dorée Musée de Sculpture Comparée, 36, 72 Musée des Monuments Français, 72 Musée d’Ethnographie, 5, 36 Musée du Quai Branly, 34, 228–30, 305n18 Musée Leconte de Lisle, xxvi Musée Léon Dierx, xxii, xxiii, 94, 195, 210–21, 227–28 Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, 230 museums, 46, 70, 94, 217–18, 228–32; provincial, 73, 215; their architecture, 56, 72, 228, 229. See also art Muslims. See Islam Napoléon, xv, 5, 30, 89–90, 109 nation: definitions of, 120–23, 169–70, 183–84, 187–88, 192–93, 224; ethnicity and, 1, 11–12, 70, 120, 223; role of art, xxii, 95, 123, 143, 212–21, 227–30. See also ancestors; France; mission civilisatrice; patrie; Renan, Ernest; République une et indivisible, la National Assembly: colonial policies and, 103–4, 203–4, 209–10; colonial representation and, xv, 3–6, 79, 81, 139, 203, 270n119 Native Americans, 5, 8, 10, 15–16, 33 Nazism, 22, 94, 95, 239n56, 266n69. See also fascism négritude, xxiv New Caledonia, 49, 50 Nibelungenlied, 11, 149. See also epic genre Niger, 63 Nora, Pierre, 2. See also lieu de mémoire Norman, 6, 67, 98, 160, 169, 169, 227

374

INDEX

North Africa, 24, 43, 70, 133, 172, 293n43. See also Algeria; Morocco North America, 15. See also Canada; United States nostalgia: at Expositions, 38, 61, 71–72; for Réunion, xxi, xxii, 110–11, 223. See also homesickness Notre-Dame de Paris, 56, 213, 247n115, 260n161 Occitan, 128, 199, 293n41. See also Provence “old colonies,” 3, 7, 40, 224. See also Caribbean; Guadeloupe; Guyane; Martinique; Réunion oliphant, 179, 192; attributed to Roland, 36, 37, 42, 73, 179; in Chanson de Roland, 174, 177, 178–85, 186, 193; at the Expositions, 36, 37, 41, 42, 56–57, 73. See also ivory Olivier, in Chanson de Roland: compared to Roland, 167, 178–80, 183, 185; his heart, 175, 186; replaced by Charlemagne, 182, 192 Olivier, Marcel, 49, 53, 56, 259n145 orality: epic genre and, 12, 142, 145–49, 162, 165; fabliau genre and, 127–28, 131, 148–49; memory and, 145–49, 178, 210, 221. See also folk; romanticism orientalism, 36, 126, 256n96. See also Hindu; India “otherness,” 26, 48, 161, 169, 228, 229; in Chanson de Roland, 165, 173, 174, 183, 192; exoticism and, 46, 60; primitivism and, xxvii. See also barbarism; foreign; primitivism; “savages”; xenophobia pagans. See Saracens Palais Bourbon, 227

Palais de Chaillot, 72 Palais de la Porte Dorée, 57, 58, 228–29. See also Cité Nationale d’Histoire de l’Immigration; Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer; Musée des Colonies Palais des Colonies, 29–31, 33, 252n28 Panorama Transatlantique, 43, 47 Panthéon, 56, 172, 206, 227 Parc d’Attractions, 71–72 Paris, xxi, 5, 79, 211, 225, 227, 230; Bédier and, xi, xix–xx, 10, 24, 48, 78, 95, 98–99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 111–13, 154, 161, 195, 205–6, 223; Chinatown, 229; city seal of, 36–38, 42, 61, 62, 68; colonialism and, 26–27, 172; as exile, xxii, xxvi, 101, 113, 114; the Expositions and, xxiii, xxix, 26–75, 90, 105, 228; its government, 19, 206; museums and, 228–30; NotreDame de, 56, 213, 247n115, 260n161; pilgrimage and, 142; Réunion and, xv, xvi, xxv–xxvi, 7, 103, 105, 147, 157, 160, 220, 227; Saint-Denis and, xiv, 92; under siege, xxi, 3, 11, 12, 22, 100; Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and, 134 Paris en 1400, 43–44, 46 Paris, Gaston: Bédier and, 105, 119, 135, 148; Chanson de Roland and, 12, 13–17, 152; colonialism and, 245n81; Dreyfus Affair and, 81; fabliau genre and, 126; nationalism and, 11, 19, 23, 24, 153; Tristan et Iseut and, 134, 136, 139–40 Parny, Évariste de: Bédier and, 111, 135, 139, 196, 275n184, 277n211; as creole poet, xx–xxiii, 241n83, 255n89, 273n150; at the Expositions, 48, 54, 59, 65; in postcolonial politics, xxv–xxvii, 203, 232; translated into Creole, 198–99

INDEX

parti colonial, 5, 6 patrie: grande, 4, 16, 56, 79, 85, 105, 107–8, 112–14, 129–30, 143, 154, 169–70, 203, 208; morale, 13–19, 24–25, 169–70, 187, 193; petite, 4, 89, 105, 107–8, 112–14, 143, 154, 159–60, 170–71, 208, 212. See also ancestors; France; nation patriotism: Bédier’s, xx, 54, 81–87, 126, 130, 144–46, 159–60, 170–71, 203; chivalry and, 95; colonialism and, 5, 10; epic genre and, 2, 11–17, 36, 57, 73–74, 133, 203; pedagogy and, 20–23; republicanism and, xxvi, xxviii; Réunion and, 79, 88–93, 108, 125, 199, 204, 208 See also France; nation Paul et Virginie, 29–30, 34, 60, 136–38, 198, 206, 214, 227, 230 pedagogy: colonialism and, xvi, 19, 20, 77, 88–93, 98, 103, 140–41, 194, 202, 209–10, 220; Creole and, 196–200, 202; national identity and, xxviii, 11–25, 26, 28, 46, 92, 99, 119, 209–10; postcolonial, xxxi, 131, 140, 149, 162, 164–66, 285n110; secular, 78 Perreau-Pradier, Jean, 220 Perse, Saint-John, 205 Pétain, Philippe (maréchal), 95, 249n137, 250n148, 270n119 Petit Palais, 37, 38, 254n72, 255n81 philology, xxix–xxxii, 81, 222, 225, 231; “best manuscript” editing and, 118, 133, 150–53, 161–63, 167, 225; colonialism and, 117–63, 166–72; Creole and, 102, 164–66; “critical method” and, 118, 124, 133, 135, 150–53, 161–63; German, 1, 11–12, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 102, 117–18, 122, 126, 130, 133, 142–44, 151–53; national-

375

ism and, 11–25, 117, 119–25, 132, 144, 150–53, 161, 166–68, 171; as weapon, 13, 15, 17, 21, 117–18. See also etymology phrenology, xxvii, 33, 36, 241n86, 305n15 pilgrimage, 103, 184, 192; epic genre and, 73, 83, 142–43, 149, 171, 203, 263n31; migration and, 145. See also religion Pinabel, 189–90 Plantagenêts, 231, 283n73 Poincaré, Raymond, xxiii, 239n63, 261n3, 262n22 Poitier, Lionel, 98, 155 Pont d’Alexandre, 37 Popular Front, 73 Porte d’Ivry, 205, 300n33 Port-Louis, 127 Portugal, 59, 89 Prévost, Marcel, 22, 85, 120, 239n61, 249n139 primitivism: colonialism and, 10, 15–16, 20, 24, 33, 72, 214; Germany and, 2, 8, 95; history and, xxvii, 36, 70, 94; philology and, 118, 134; Réunion and, xxix, 28, 39. See also “otherness”; “savages” Prix Goncourt, xxiii–xxiv, 278n220 protestantism, 6 Provence, 127, 128, 132, 169, 283n68. See also Occitan provinces: Bédier and, 107, 113, 143, 198; colonialism and, xxviii, xxix, 4–5, 205, 206; at the Expositions, 61–63, 66–67, 72, 73; languages and, 49, 99, 198; national identity and, 48, 113, 114, 143, 159–60, 169, 229; Réunion and, 6, 74, 99, 214–15, 227. See also Alsace; Brittany; Dauphiné; Lorraine

376

INDEX

purity: language and, 23, 117–18, 133, 149, 152, 162, 168; moral, 176, 179, 182, 185, 212; nationalism and, xxx, 13, 18, 21, 82, 125, 130, 144, 166, 167, 169, 208; philology and, 152, 161, 162, 171; racial, xviii–xxix, 18, 67–68, 90–92, 94–100, 111, 117, 133, 145, 194, 203, 207. See also genealogy; métissage Quinet, Edgar, 11–12, 123 Rabel, 182, 183, 184, 185, 192 Racine, Jean, 122, 133, 152, 277n211 Rashîd, Haroun al- (caliph), 175, 176, 179 reactionary, xxix, 78, 84–86, 144, 170. See also Action Française “Redskins,” 5, 10, 15–16 relics, 32, 179, 181, 184–85, 186, 294n56; reliquary, 42, 180, 181, 184, 305n15 religion: epic genre and, 143, 165, 173, 175, 177, 182, 192; Réunionnnais identity and, xi, 157, 218, 220, 227; Réunionnais politics and, 78. See also anti-Semitism; Bible; Catholicism; Christianity; conversion; Crusades; Hindu; Islam; Judaism; pilgrimage; saint; Saracens Renan, Ernest: Bédier and, 111, 119–22, 208, 239n63, 278n219, 287n131; nation and, 17–19, 146, 169, 241n6, 292n35; philology and, 119–21; romanticism and, 124 République une et indivisible, la, xiii, 122, 159–60, 250n144 Réunion: architecture of, 51, 66, 100, 154, 204; as “colonizing colony,” 6–7, 28, 77, 224; as Eden, 39; at the Expositions, 27–28, 29–30, 38–41, 48–55, 56, 57, 59–60, 61, 63–69, 126; ferns

and, 29, 67, 105, 107, 108–9; German plan to colonize, 9–10; as “island of poets,” xx–xxvii, 40–41, 59, 65, 66, 135, 139–40, 146, 158, 196, 198–99, 227, 232; as model for nation, 39, 138, 204, 219; name changes, xiv–xvi, xxviii, 153–54; as “old colony,” 3, 7, 40, 224; as “old France,” 39, 55, 89, 97, 110–11, 131, 139, 154, 162, 194, 196, 216; politics of, xxv–xxvii, 2–10, 77–80, 104, 139, 194–210, 231–32; as a “second France,” xiv, 6, 10, 25, 29, 48–49, 61, 63, 77, 79, 87, 125, 201, 203, 208–9, 211–13, 224; settlement of, xvi–xvii, xix, xx, xxxi, 95, 202–3, 207–10, 231–32. See also départementalisation; métissage Réunionnité, xviii, xxvi, 199, 205, 220, 231–32 revanche, xxviii, 4–8, 20, 21, 78, 88. See also Franco-Prussian war; Germany Revolution, the: Bédier and, 82, 88, 90, 147; at the Expositions, 31, 32, 60, 63; Leblonds and, 79, 262n25; republicanism and, xxviii, 2–3, 80, 82, 86; Réunion and, xiv–xv, xxii, 99 Rhine river, 8, 47 Ricquebourg, Jean, 213 Rocher, Gabriel, 86 Roland, 173, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188, 190, 191, 192; argument with Olivier, 178–80; compared to the Cid, 21; his death, 180–81, 184, 185, 187, 188, 190; his glove, 173; his heart, 175, 186; his horn, 36, 37, 42, 73, 174, 177, 178–85, 186, 193; his sword, 92, 173, 180–81, 182, 183, 192, 293n49; honor and, 177–78, 182–83, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191, 193; as model for modern nation, 10, 12, 14, 16, 21–24, 36, 84, 92, 146, 155,

INDEX

166, 167, 183, 231; pact against him, 175, 176, 187, 191; in postcolonial theater, 226; statue in Germany, 21. See also Chanson de Roland romance: Arthurian, xxiv, 111; colonialism and, 87, 30, 227, 259n149, 270n123, 273n151; genre, xx, xxiv, 122, 125, 132–41, 142, 163, 176, 225; languages, 104, 118, 200. See also Tristan et Iseut romanticism, xxi, xxii, xxvii, 105, 123–24, 143, 149, 212 Rome: epic genre and, 11, 23; exile and, 114; imperialism and, 16, 19, 97, 114, 129, 130, 154; modern nations and, 1, 18, 70 Roncevaux: battle location, xxviii, 36, 155, 174, 186, 187, 202; compared to modern war, 10, 14, 84, 145, 146; nation and, 25, 192–93 Roques, Mario, 205–6, 241n86, 263n39 royalism, xiv, xv, xxviii, 2–3, 76, 79, 80, 83, 86–88, 96, 109, 153, 213; in Chanson de Roland, 182, 189; at the Expositions, 36–37, 42–43, 56, 68. See also Bourbon dynasty; Capetian; Carolingian; Merovingian Russia, 27, 89–90, 126, 175, 176, 241n83, 263n39 saint, xiv, xv, 55, 56, 92, 214, 215–18; France as, 168, 170–71; Roland as, 84, 180. See also religion Saint-André, 206 Saint-Barthélemy, 120, 121 Saint-Denis: Bédier’s home, xii, 20–25, 77–80, 90, 100–105, 107, 112, 135–39, 201–6, 208, 213, 223; as capital of Réunion, 126; its Exposition, xxiii, 54; medievalism and, xiv, 92, 150–51, 155–61, 164, 167

377

Sainte-Suzanne, xix Saint-Louis, xiv Saint-Paul, xxv, 207–10, 231–33 Saint-Pierre, 203 Saint Sernin, 184 Salazie, 140 “saming,” 48–50, 122–24, 131, 134–35. See also assimilation São Tomé, 226 Saracens, xxx–xxxi, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172–84, 186, 190–92; with blond hair, 173; oliphant and, 57, 180–85. See also Arabs; Marsile; Moors; Islam Saragossa, 14, 174, 175, 176, 191 Sarkis, 211, 215–21 “savages,” xi, xxvii, xxviii, 5, 6, 8–10, 99, 154, 194, 214. See also “otherness”; primitivism Scandinavia, 33, 175 sculpture: of Charlemagne, 19; of François I, 42; of métissage, 209, 211; museums and, 36, 56, 72, 94, 211–21; of Paul and Virginie, 30, 34; of “Réunionnais inspiration,” 65; of Roland, 21. See also art Scythes, 149 Second Empire, xv, 26, 77, 223, 255n89 Second Republic, xv, xxii Segre, Cesare, 161, 162 Seine River, 36, 39, 41, 63, 103, 126 Sénégal, 8, 33 Sham’s (Chamsidinne Bénali), xxvi Short, Ian, 161, 162, 292n33, 296n85, 296n102 silk, xxxi, 173–78, 181–82, 192 slavery, xvi, 91, 218, 219, 232; Bédier and, xix, 89, 99–100; creole poets and, xxi, xxvi; at the Expositions, 59; maloya and, 215, 220; métissage and, xviii, 96, 209–10. See also abolition

378

INDEX

socialism, xxvi, xxix, 73, 76, 79, 81–83, 87, 196, 198, 220. See also class relations; Jaurès, Jean Société des Anciens Textes Français, 153, 248n134 Somalia, 128 Somalis, 49, 50 Sorbonne, 12, 17, 120 South Africa, 126, 215 Spain: Chanson de Roland and, xxx, 171, 175, 176, 183, 185, 190, 192, 292n27, 297n107; French monarchy and, 237n22; medieval Judaism and, 226; as modern nation, 18 Spanish language, 196, 200, 296n93 Stengel, Edmund, 151, 153, 288n160 Suchier, Hermann, 139 Sudan, 131, 146 Sudre, Camille, 205 Suez Canal, xvi, 103 Syria, 56, 72–73, 182 Tahiti, 63, 199 Taine, Hippolyte, 120, 241n6, 283n68 terre majur, 159–60, 168–71. See also ancestors; nation Texte, Joseph, 28, 101–5, 124–25, 252n24, 278n223 Tharaud, Jérôme, 111 Thierry, 188–91 Thomas, author of a Tristan romance, 133, 134, 135, 138 Togo, 27 Tonkin, 8, 145, 146 Toulouse, 36, 42, 73 Touraine, 29, 101 translation: Bédier and, xxiv, xxx, 23, 61, 73, 74, 89, 113–14, 132–41, 142, 151, 166–71, 182, 198–99; of Chanson de Roland, xxiv, xxx, 20, 23, 73, 142, 150–51, 162, 166–71, 182, 189, 231;

into Creole, xxvi–xxvii, 113–14, 198– 99; from Malagasy, xxi; of Tristan and Iseut, 132–41. See also French, medieval; French language Tristan et Iseut (Bédier), 132–42, 161, 264n39, 292n17; adapted for the stage, 47, 140, 142, 249n139, 283n68; Anglo-Norman dialect of, 133; as colonial literature, xxv, 30, 60, 135–38, 139–40, 205, 216, 227, 283n70; dedicated to Bédier’s stepfather, xxx, 138–39; on desk given to Bédier, 109, 140, 290n188, 300n35; edition of, xxx, 124, 133, 135, 279n3; German literature and, 132, 133, 134; as modern novel, 46, 73, 133–35, 140, 281n34; nationalism and, 125, 132–33, 150, 171, 250n144; popularity of, xx, xxx, 46, 54, 140, 200, 201, 204, 207, 255n80, 298n17; as rival to Wagner’s opera, 204–5; translated into Creole, xxvii, 198–99. See also romance Trocadéro, 36, 38, 72 Tunisia, 41, 43, 71, 258n129 Turpin, 180, 183 Ulysse, cafre (Leblond), xxiii, xxiv, 157, 298n12 Umayyads, 176 United States, xxiv, 5, 21, 140, 248n134, 261n10, 263n31, 279n229 University of Strasbourg, 16, 21, 158–59, 160 Valdabron, 184 Vaugeois, Henri, 80 verandah, 39, 54, 64–65, 214. See also architecture Vercingétorix, 94, 97 Vergès, Françoise, 220, 276n195, 291n2, 303n83, 305n22

INDEX

379

Vergès, Paul, 231–32, 305n22 Versailles, 51, 256n111 Vieux Paris, 41–42, 43, 46 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène, 36 Viry, Firmin, 220, 304n85 Vollard, Ambroise, 214 Voltaire, 11–12, 103, 204, 245n69

xxviii, 47, 153, 159; Bédier and, xx, 3, 21–24, 54, 144, 150, 263n31, 289n167; colonialism and, 7, 8–10, 27, 47; Islam and, 172; nationalism and, 2, 170. See also Germany World War II, 9, 22, 94–95. See also Nazism

Wagner, Richard, 95, 134, 204–5, 286n122 Waro, Danyèl, 220 Wilhelm II (kaiser), 7, 9 World Fairs. See Expositions Universelles World War I: Alsace-Lorraine and,

xenophobia, xxxi, 80, 124–25, 144, 266n69. See also foreign; “otherness” Yarra, 127, 129, 130, 148 Yemen, 128 Zoulous, 126, 129, 246n94

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MICHELLE R. WARREN is professor of comparative literature at

Dartmouth College and the author of History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100–1300 (Minnesota, 2000).