Visions of war in France : fiction, art, ideology / Catharine Savage Brosman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brosman, Catharine Savage, 1934-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French fiction--History and criticism.

French fiction.

War in literature.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 245 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [1999]

Summary:

In this lucid, lively work, Catharine Savage Brosman examines literary depictions of war and wartime in France from the early nineteenth century -- the Napoleonic era -- through World War II and its aftermath. Visions of War in France explores -- in a historical, cultural, and ideological context -- the development of nationalism and evolving views on warfare, how war has been treated by authors and artists in France since 1800, and the distinctive ways of grappling with the physical, psychological, and philosophical issues in the war-novel genre.

In the first chapters, Brosman provides a historical framework by analyzing attitudes toward armed conflict in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in connection with the question of nationalism; by identifying the iconography and symbolism of war in post-Revolutionary France, especially visual art; and by scrutinizing the techniques of French war fiction -- its principles of composition and arrangement.

The remaining chapters investigate fictional portrayals of Napoleonic battles, particularly Waterloo, the Franco-Prussian War, and the two world wars as well as the recent French colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria. Among the many writers discussed are Stendhal, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Maupassant, Proust, Sartre, Cocteau, and Duras.

Through her adept choice of literary examples, Brosman illustrates how the transformation in attitudes toward war is paralleled by evolving fictional techniques and forms, including erosion of standards of language. Tracing this development, which is connected to both modernism and postmodernism, Visions of War in France offers elements of a poetics of war writing and contributes to an appreciationof the purposes and effects of war literature and images in French culture during the past two hundred years.

Contents:

1 The Rationale of war in Enlightenment and Romantic Literature 1

2 Icons with a Sword: French Nationalistic and Military Symbolism 24

3 Narratives of War: Structures and Types 60

4 The Grande Armee and Waterloo: The Napoleonic Wars in Fiction 86

5 The Franco-Prussian War and Early Third Republic: War Fiction and Nationalism 108

6 Where are the Wars of Yesteryear? The Great War and French Modernism 135

7 Variations on a Theme: World War II and Literary Forms 175

8 Repetition and Rupture: The Legacy of Modern French Wars 206.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [215]-227) and index.

ISBN:

0807123463

OCLC:

40311583