Représentations et refigurations de Naxos et de Céphalonie chez Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau, French diplomat and prolific writer, best known for his controversial Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853-1855), also wrote about Greece after a four-year stay in Athens. This inspired him to write a study entitled Au Royaume des Hellènes, published as a series of...
Salvato in:
| Autore principale: | |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Français |
| Pubblicazione: |
2025
|
| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau, French diplomat and prolific writer, best known for his controversial Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853-1855), also wrote about Greece after a four-year stay in Athens. This inspired him to write a study entitled Au Royaume des Hellènes, published as a series of articles in a French magazine, Le Correspondant, in 1878. The present paper is concerned with the representation of space and people in two of his fictional works, Akrivie Phrangopoulo and Le Mouchoir Rouge, completed in 1867 and 1868 respectively and published in 1872 in a collection of prose works entitled Souvenirs de voyage. In these narratives, the author avoids the traditional representation of Greece as a modern state continuing the legacy of classical antiquity. In the two novellas in question the writer avoids the conventional view of Greece as a modern state continuing the achievements of its classical past; instead, he writes stories for each of the islands—Naxos, Antiparos, and Santorini on the one hand, and Cephalonia on the other— whose plots reflect, in the first case the noble and glorious legacy of medieval chivalry stemming from the Frankish occupation of the Cyclades, and in the second, the degenerate influence of the trade-oriented Republic of Venice, which occupied Cephalonia, among other islands. The two novellas, besides articulating Gobineau’s reactionary and pro-monarchist political ideology, can be placed within the context of a medieval revival in Romantic and post-Romantic French and English literature, which culminated in the second half of the nineteenth century. |
|---|