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Book Cover
E-book
Author Melzer, Sara E.

Title Colonizer or colonized : the hidden stories of early modern French culture / Sara E. Melzer
Edition 1st ed
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2012]
©2012

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Description 1 online resource (320 pages) : illustrations
Series EBL-Schweitzer
Contents pt. I. France's colonial relation to the ancient world -- pt. II. France's colonial relation to the new world -- pt. III. Weaving the two colonial stories together : escaping barbarism
Summary "Colonizer or Colonized introduces two colonial stories into the heart of France's literary and cultural history. The first describes elite France's conflicted relationship to the Ancient World. As much as French intellectuals aligned themselves with the Greco-Romans as an "us," they also resented the Ancients as an imperial "them," haunted by the memory that both the Greeks and Romans had colonized their ancestors, the Gauls. This memory put the elite on the defensive--defending against the legacy of this colonized past and the fear that they were the barbarian other. The second story mirrored the first. Just as the Romans had colonized the Gauls, France would colonize the New World, becoming the "New Rome" by creating a "New France." Borrowing the Roman strategy, the French Church and State developed an assimilationist stance towards the Amerindian "barbarian." This policy provided a foundation for what would become the nation's most basic stance towards the other. However, this version of assimilation, unlike its subsequent ones, encouraged the colonized and the colonizer to engage in close forms of contact, such as mixed marriages and communities. This book weaves these two different stories together in a triangulated dynamic. It asks the Ancients to step aside to include the New World other into a larger narrative in which elite France carved out their nation's emerging cultural identity in relation to both the New World and the Ancient World. Sara E. Melzer is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Discourses of the Fall: A Study of Pascal's Pensées and coeditor of From the Royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France."--Project Muse
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject LITERARY CRITICISM.
European -- French.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- French.
Civilization
Civilization -- Classical influences
Civilization -- Philosophy
French colonies
Einfluss
Kolonie
Kultur
Kolonie.
Einfluss.
Kultur.
Kolonier.
Kolonialvälde.
Imperialism -- idéhistoriska aspekter.
Romerska influenser.
SUBJECT France -- Colonies -- America. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh88007196
France -- Civilization -- Classical influences. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh96005675
France -- Civilization -- Philosophy
France -- Civilization -- History
France -- Civilization. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85051184
Subject America
France
Frankreich
Frankreich.
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2011030912
ISBN 9780812205183
0812205189
0812243633
9780812243635
9781283891080
1283891085