Notes

Archival Abbreviations

AAF

Archives de l’Académie Française, Paris

ADR

Archives départementales de La Réunion, Sainte-Clothilde, La Réunion

AHC

Archives d’histoire contemporaine, Paris

ANF

Archives nationales de France, Paris

BAR

Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris

BHP

Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris

BIF

Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris

BNF

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

BVC

Bibliothèque Victor Cousin, La Sorbonne, Paris (MS. 263)

CFB

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. 1. Interview published in Tal 112–18 (citation at 114).

2. 2. Fabian.

3. 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. 4. Stoler and McGranahan 8.

5. 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. 6. Bancel and Blanchard, “Les origines” 34; also Girardet, Mythes 160.

7. 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. 8. Olivier, Exposition 5.2:999; Mariol 108.

9. 9. Pirotin 123–28. Even in the mid-twentieth century, Réunion could be judged “ideological” (Marius Leblond, Les grandes heures 207).

10. 10. Article by Candide Azéma, acting mayor of Saint-Denis in 1848 (Azéma 102–6).

11. 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 anti-colonialist 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. 12. Examples in Beniamino, “De l’interprétation”; Bertile et al.; Combeau, Eve, et al.; Fuma, Histoire; Gailland; Jablonka; Tal; Albert Weber.

13. 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. 14. “Créole,” Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française; “Créole,” Trésor de la langue française; Garraway 17–20.

15. 15. Baudelaire 45; “Joseph Bédier,” Petit Marseillais; Artus.

16. 16. E.g., Buet 18, 54, 75–76.

17. 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. 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. 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. 20. “Créole de sang, Leconte de Lisle est encore créole par le temps qu’il passa dans son pays” (Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 319).

21. 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. 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. 23. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 118; Adolphe Bédier 53 (Barassin offers a rather different history of sugar industrialization).

24. 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. 25. Lobligeois 47–62, 107–17; Caudron 8, 24–25, 30; Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 58–66; Adolphe Bédier 86 (on Bédier landholdings around Sainte-Suzanne); Eve, Un quartier 121–22, 131, 139, 141–45, 168).

26. 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. 27. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 118–19 (the family arrived in May; the Franco-Prussian 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. 28. Leblond, L’île enchantée 138–39.

29. 29. Leal 10, 135.

30. 30. Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 19, 62; Mille, Barnavaux 175.

31. 31. Letter dated January 1773 (Œuvres choisies 469–72).

32. 32. Fidus 343; Adolphe Bédier 36.

33. 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. 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. 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).

36. 36. Leconte de Lisle, Discours 3–4; De Mulder; Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 210–13, 248–51; Dakyns 145–60, Ridoux 98–99.

37. 37. Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 338–40; Vianey 68–69.

38. 38. Baudelaire 45; Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 263, 315–54; Fondanaux; Sham’s 31.

39. 39. Noulet 43.

40. 40. Prince of Poets: ibid. 25–26. Superiority over other poets: cited in Boyer 8.

41. 41. Boyer 8.

42. 42. Parny in Barquissau, “Lettres familières” 574–75, Chevaliers 93–94.

43. 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, anti-aristocratic 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. 44. Praise and criticism: Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 361–64; Foucque, “Le conte 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. 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. 46. Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 8; also Congrès (1931), 6–7.

47. 47. Ary Leblond, “Le bicentennaire”; similar comment in Barquissau, Chevaliers 61–94; Foucque, “Apport” 102–6; Sam-Long, De l’élégie 45–57.

48. 48. Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 8, 56–57.

49. 49. ANF, F21/4885/dossier 13 (supporters include Barrès, Jules Lemaître, and Sully Prudhomme); Beniamino, “Leconte de Lisle.”

50. 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. 51. E.g., Caudron 396.

52. 52. Leblonds, La Réunion et Paris 5, 6 (also J. G. Francsesme, “Nos Créoles,” 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. 53. Leblond, “Introduction” 7; Foucque, “Apport.”

54. 54. E.g., Leblond, L’île enchantée 137–42, 150.

55. 55. “Joseph Bédier est mort!”; also Pirotin, “one of the elites who have honored the whole nation” (171–73).

56. 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. 57. Schultz.

58. 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. 59. Olivier, Exposition 4:171, 296; Congrès 81–87.

60. 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. 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. 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. 63. Contributors include the Leblonds, Jean D’Esme, Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras, Raymond Poincaré, Ernest Renan (posthumously) . . . and the grand-niece 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. 64. Bédier, Études critiques; Mille, Barnavaux 174.

65. 65. Cazemage, “La vie et l’œuvre” 112.

66. 66. Leblond, Leconte de Lisle 355.

67. 67. Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 5, “La poésie” 821.

68. 68. Lebel, Le livre du pays noir, Histoire de la littérature coloniale en France, Les établissments français d’outre-mer.

69. 69. Wittman.

70. 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. 71. Le journal de l’île de la Réunion (16 June 1964).

72. 72. Foucque, ed., Les poètes de l’île Bourbon 8.

73. 73. De Rauville.

74. 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. 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. 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. 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. 78. Le mémorial 7:389–95; Lougnon, Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle 169–70, 189–92.

79. 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. 80. Lecherbonnier; the same Bulletin celebrates Leconte de Lisle and the Leblonds.

81. 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. 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 authorized 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. 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. 84. Nout Lang: Magazine pou met an ord la lang kréol Larénion 2 (2000): 7; Gauvin on the magazine in Gauthier.

85. 85. On the civilizing mission, Conklin.

86. 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. 87. Gossman, Between 272–74, 282–84.

88. 88. Ganim has posited similar convergences at London expositions (83–107).

1. Roncevaux and Réunion

1. 1. Geary, The Myth of Nations 15–40. Rome of course remained instrumental, notably in French efforts to “Latinize” Algeria (Lorcin).

2. 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. 3. Bernard-Griffiths et al.; Dakyns; Glencross; Gossman, Medievalism; Redman.

4. 4. Nora, “L’‘Histoire de France’ de Lavisse” 861.

5. 5. Chafer and Sackur 5; illustrated in art by the valorization of medieval “primitifs” as authentic sources of national identity (Morowitz).

6. 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. 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. 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 Foscolo Benedetto characterizes Bédier’s entire philological theory as part of a right-wing “campagna germanofoba” that impaired his critical vision (64–66).

9. 9. Digeon 80–83.

10. 10. Flaubert, Correspondance VI, 259, 28 (cited in Digeon 167); Saint-Victor 244.

11. 11. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen 5 (citing Gambetta 2:22).

12. 12. Mérignhac 369.

13. 13. Hedo-Vivier 84, 116–18; similar interventions by Victor Schoelcher (representing Martinique) (Polémique coloniale 1:39–64, 2:186).

14. 14. Hedo-Vivier 115; Binoche 31–71 (citation at 45: “La République ne se serait pas faite”).

15. 15. Hedo-Vivier 115; Binoche 31–71; Combeau, ed., La Réunion sous la Troisième République.

16. 16. M. Raboisson, Étude sur les colonies et la colonisation au regard de la France (1877) (cited in Girardet, Le nationalisme français 89).

17. 17. M. Bechelem in Lycée de Saint-Denis (1923) 9.

18. 18. E.g., Barrès, Scènes et doctrines 303, 308; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 20–21; Ford; Gerson; Lebovics, True France; Thiesse; Turetti.

19. 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. 20. Dias, Musée 175–94; Peer 136–37.

21. 21. E.g., Hargreaves 118–19 (on Pierre Mille’s provincial colonialism); Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:268.

22. 22. Cited in Maran 12; further examples in Craig 217, 238, 290.

23. 23. Morton, Hybrid Modernities 131–74.

24. 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. 25. Ganiage 165–69; Grupp; Lagana; Persell.

26. 26. Morand, “Rien que la terre” 333.

27. 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. 28. De Mahy, Discours; Hedo-Vivier 92–93, 113, 130.

29. 29. Hedo-Vivier 110, 115–18.

30. 30. Gagneur, “La doctrine coloniale” 59–61, 74–104; Daughton 173–74, 185– 86, 195.

31. 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. 32. Hedo-Vivier 140, 149; arguments later continued by the Leblonds (e.g., “Île de la Réunion” 7).

33. 33. Cited in Binoche 324.

34. 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. 35. De Mahy, “Un peu de politique.”

36. 36. Hedo-Vivier 154–75; Ageron, France coloniale 113–29; Ganiage 184–97; Binoche 316–43.

37. 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. 38. Hedo-Vivier 110–12, 125, 194–97; Binoche 175, 185–86, 201–2, 207, 422–23.

39. 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. 40. “En mémoire de tout ce que Bourbon a fait à Madagascar pour Madagascar. Madagascar alors pays ingrat” (undated note, CFB, liasse 112).

41. 41. Hedo-Vivier 124.

42. 42. Leroy-Beaulieu 409, 410; Cottias on the systematic marginalization of the “old colonies” in republican discourse.

43. 43. Jourdain (1936); Schmokel (1964); Smith (1978); Knoll and Gann (1987); Henderson (1993); Metzger (2002).

44. 44. Mayeur, Les débuts 131; Digeon 452–53; Gall 653–64. Contemporary French accounts of German colonialism include Lair (1902) and Tonnelat (1908).

45. 45. Poidevin and Bariéty 170–77; Cooke 118–36; Ganiage 243–73.

46. 46. Poidevin and Bariéty 177–90; Barlow (1940); Allain, Agadir 1911 (1976); Barraclough (1982).

47. 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. 48. Poidevin and Bariéty 191–94.

49. 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 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. 50. Gossman Between 263; Beaunier 300.

51. 51. Sarcey, Le siège de Paris 302; Leconte de Lisle, Le sacre de Paris.

52. 52. Thomassy (reviewing Francisque Michel’s 1837 edition of Roland).

53. 53. Eve, La première guerre 39, 53–67.

54. 54. Déroulède, Discours prononcé à Champigny-la-Bataille, 3 December 1908 (cited in Girardet, Le nationalisme français 226).

55. 55. Mauduit-Bédier 10.

56. 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. 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. 58. Leguen 189.

59. 59. Townsend 56–57, citing Ernst von Weber in the National Zeitung (20 September 1870); Metzger 228–39; Lakowski 379–90.

60. 60. Leblond, L’Île de la Réunion 3–4.

61. 61. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 424–28; Adrien Jacob de Cordemoy 35.

62. 62. E.g., Girardet, L’idée coloniale 118–20; Andrew and Kanya-Forstner 55–163; Le mémorial 5:119.

63. 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. 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. 65. Girard; Girardet, “L’apothéose” 1088–89. Ironically, the rhetoric of crusade made Christianity central to the imperial designs of secular republicanism (Daughton).

66. 66. Monod, De la possibilité; Lavisse; Digeon 274, 539–40; Nora, “L’‘Histoire de France’ de Lavisse,” “Lavisse, instituteur national.”

67. 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. 68. Wilmotte (1917); Ridoux 143–61; Leerssen, “Literary Historicism” 235–37; Himmelsbach.

69. 69. “Les Français n’ont pas la tête épique” (cited by Voltaire 537, 542).

70. 70. Quinet 27.

71. 71. Quinet (1831); Vitet, “Chanson de Roland” (1852); Autié (1867); Leerssen, “Primitive Orality.”

72. 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. 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. 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 cata pulted Roland to the center stage of patriotism, “une manifestation contre les vainqueurs” (Épopées françaises, 2nd ed., 2:791).

75. 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. 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. 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. 78. Paris, Histoire poétique de Charlemagne 3–4.

79. 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. 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. 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).

82. 82. “Ne reconnaissez-vous pas, dans ces procédés naïvement atroces, quelques-unes des erreurs qui ne sont pas tout à fait éteintes dans notre pays?” (Paris, “La chanson de Roland” 106).

83. 83. Ibid. 94–98, 107.

84. 84. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” ix (citing Paris’s Histoire poétique de Charlemagne 1–10).

85. 85. Ibid. xiv, lxxi; Dakyns 107; Duggan, “Franco-German” 100–2.

86. 86. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” xlvi.

87. 87. Ibid. clxxiii.

88. 88. Gautier, “Chronique” 498.

89. 89. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” viii, xi, lxxvi, lxxviii, clxxxvii, cc–cci; Les épopées françaises (1892) 2:791.

90. 90. Ibid. lxxviii.

91. 91. Gautier, “Chronique” 495.

92. 92. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” cc; similar sentiment at cxvii.

93. 93. E.g., “Histoire d’un poëme,” lxxvi, cxvii, cxx. Eugène Aubry-Vitet appreciates Gautier’s conception in precisely these terms (1872).

94. 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. 95. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme,” cxxvii; Lenient also defines Roland as both quintessentially French and profoundly universal (La poésie patriotique 42).

96. 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. 97. Fustel, “L’Alsace” 96, 100–2.

98. 98. Fustel, “De la manière” 244.

99. 99. Ibid. 245, also 248.

100. 100. On Renan: Hartog 44–61; Thom, especially 33–34; Digeon 235–36.

101. 101. Bähler on connections between Renan and Paris (Gaston Paris 220–32).

102. 102. Renan, “La guerre” 277, La réforme 47.

103. 103. Ibid. 266, La réforme 92.

104. 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. 105. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” 903, 906.

106. 106. Ibid. 904–6.

107. 107. Ibid. 904. Paris says the same: “la piété envers les aïeux est le plus fort ciment d’une nation” (“Discours” 55).

108. 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. 109. “Un gros palefrenier allemand” (Renan, “Prière sur l’Acropole” 754); also Renan, “Joseph-Victor Le Clerc” 664–65.

110. 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 Hispano-Romains, 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. 111. Bédier, “Le quatrième centenaire” 368; CFB, liasse 7bis, pp. 199–201.

112. 112. Effros, “The Germanic Invasions.”

113. 113. Ozouf, L’école de la France 339–50; Digeon 99; Dietler; Ehrard; Burguière (on historiography of the Gauls before 1870).

114. 114. E.g., Lacombe; Fourdrignier.

115. 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. 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. 117. Weber, “Gauls versus Franks.”

118. 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).

119. 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. 120. Brunetière, “L’érudition contemporaine”; Digeon 314–16; Compagnon 114–19.

121. 121. Amalvi 97–100; Ozouf, L’école, l’église 113.

122. 122. Roehrich 6; Bouchor (1899) 14; Guiney 122 (on Roehrich); popular editions by Léon Clédat also evidence a strongly patriotic approach.

123. 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. 124. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 121 (further discussion in chapters 3 and 4).

125. 125. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:451–52.

126. 126. Lenient, La poésie patriotique 29, 42.

127. 127. E.g., Bédier, “L’esprit” 108.

128. 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. 129. Course notes (CFB, liasse 105).

130. 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. 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. 132. Digeon 388–89.

133. 133. Bédier, “La pression allemande” 6n1; letter to the Marquise, 8 Sept 1911 (BVC, ff. 104v).

134. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

141. 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. 142. Bédier, “La pression allemande” 31–33.

143. 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. 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. 145. Nichols, “Modernism” 44; Bähler, Gaston Paris 461; Bancel and Blanchard, “Les origines” 35–36.

146. 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. 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. 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. 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). Christian missionaries and historians also take up the metaphor: Groffier (1908); Pache (1928); Lhande (1932); Grousset (1939).

150. 150. Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 18, 43.

151. 151. E.g., Gaffarel 90; Legendre i–iv; Livre d’or (1931), preface.

152. 152. Duggan, “Franco-German” 100.

153. 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. 1. Dakyns 37–40; Emery and Morowitz 189–91; Jordan.

2. 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. 3. Mandell 31–33.

4. 4. Mandell 36, 56, 82–83, 105, 113.

5. 5. Lapauze 303–4; Guide chaix 62, 87–88, 107, 196; Weber, France, Fin-de-Siècle 243.

6. 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. 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. 8. Exposition internationale 45–48; Herbert 12, 36–39.

9. 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. 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. 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. 12. Exposition universelle de 1889 14; Debans 311–12. Even some of the plants sent for the colonial garden were not native to Réunion (Monod, Exposition 2:193–94).

13. 13. Revue de l’Exposition de 1889 2:91.

14. 14. Cheval and Tchakaloff.

15. 15. Picard (1889) 2:155–56; Parville 111; Debans 340.

16. 16. Images reproduced in Cheval and Tchakaloff (100, 121, 149, 205, 214, 226, 234, 235).

17. 17. Monod, Exposition 1:76–78, 1:332–44, 2:1–86; Richard.

18. 18. Monod, Exposition 1:334.

19. 19. Silverman, “The 1889 Exhibition” 74, 77.

20. 20. Exposition de 1889 90.

21. 21. Merveilles (1889) 632–63, 669.

22. 22. Debans 350.

23. 23. Rearick 120–21; “La reconstruction historique de la Tour de Nesle.”

24. 24. Volait; Glücq, pl. 40. Texte and Mâle both found the Rue du Caire particularly entrancing (Une amitié 137, 142).

25. 25. Debans 353; Grison 45–47.

26. 26. WML 87.1674.19.1.

27. 27. Parville 78.

28. 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. 29. Debans 118, 121, 122; Monod, Exposition 1:65.

30. 30. Le Roux.

31. 31. Goudeau 84.

32. 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. 33. Champier; Picard (1889) 2:245, 257.

34. 34. Silverman, “The 1889 Exhibition” 79–80; some criticized this temporal contrast (Guide bleu 96).

35. 35. Monod, Exposition 1:65; Parville 77; Garnier and Ammann 619–49, 734–71.

36. 36. Grison 134–35.

37. 37. Cited in Dakyns 74–75.

38. 38. Dias, Musée 42–44, 168–72; Herbert 43, 51–53; Effros on the roles of early medieval artifacts in constructing national history.

39. 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. 40. Eudel; full description in Golvin.

41. 41. Roehrich 4.

42. 42. Silverman, Art nouveau 44–45.

43. 43. History of images in Declerck. The seal’s colonial medievalism was obvious to Paul Morand in 1931 (“Rien que la terre” 345).

44. 44. Souvenir booklet: L’Exposition en miniature (WML 86.19.308). Réunionnais republicans: Lahuppe 22.

45. 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. 46. Rearick 139–41.

47. 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. 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. 49. The bar-kiosk stands today in the Bois de Vincennes, in the former Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale.

50. 50. Garsault 260–61, 289, 304.

51. 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. 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. 53. Charles-Roux 66–79, 222; Picard (1900) 4:341–42, 352.

54. 54. Charles-Roux 28, also Hale 32–84.

55. 55. “un peu mélancoliques, comme d’honorables et vieilles personnes dont l’histoire est terminée” (Quantin 177).

56. 56. Malo.

57. 57. Charles-Roux 1, 3.

58. 58. On medieval, Emery and Morowitz 204.

59. 59. L’Exposition de Paris (1900) 3:11–13.

60. 60. Guide chaix 2; Lapauze 42–45.

61. 61. Picard (1900) 7:244–46.

62. 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.

63. 63. Gers 252–53.

64. 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. 65. Exposition universelle de 1900: le Vieux Paris 41, 192; Emery and Morowitz 192–208.

66. 66. Guide illustré 110.

67. 67. Combes, “Paris en 1400” 39–40; Gayet.

68. 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. 69. Guide chaix 37; Merveilles (1900) 2:427, 434. Photos in Exposition universelle de 1900: catalogue officiel illustré 5; Les beaux-arts 125.

70. 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. 71. Merveilles (1900) 2:424; Emery and Morowitz on the retrospective art exhibit (76–77).

72. 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. 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. 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. 75. “Aujourd’hui, en effet, évoque hier” (Combes, “Paris en 1400” 22).

76. 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. 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. 78. Guide chaix 252, 288.

79. 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).

80. 80. “Comment éviter une recrudescence d’orgueil et de foi en la vitalité de la patrie . . .” (Paul Hervieu addressing the Académie Française, cited in Charles-Roux 236).

81. 81. The exhibit at the Petit Palais included household objects decorated with illustrations of Tristan and Iseult (Merveilles [1900] 2:428).

82. 82. Letter to Joseph Texte, 6 June 1900 (Une amitié 294–95).

83. 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. 84. Charles-Roux 227.

85. 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. 86. Wilder on colonial humanism (French Imperial Nation-State 41–145), Young on “imperial saming” (White Mythologies 12–17).

87. 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. 88. Quantin 187.

89. 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. 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. 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. 92. Leblond, “Île de la Réunion” 5; Le miracle de la race 81.

93. 93. Olivier, Exposition 5.2:997; Livre d’or (1931) 135; Larrouy.

94. 94. Aldrich, “Le guide.”

95. 95. Aldrich notes that Réunion’s railway represents a rare glimpse of “European” technology in Demaison’s guide (“Le guide” 610).

96. 96. Undated typescript of “Notice sur le Palais de la Réunion” (ADR 8M97); 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. 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. 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. 99. ADR 8M96.

100. 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. 101. Martinique and Guadeloupe criticism: Morton, Hybrid Modernities 31. Visitor disappointment: unsigned and undated typescript (ADR 8M97).

102. 102. Olivier, Exposition 5.2:1017.

103. 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. 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. 105. ADR 8M91 (inventory of shipments to Paris), ADR 8M106 (inventory of film scenes, letters from 1932 related to screenings).

106. 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. 107. Olivier, Exposition 5.1:312–19.

108. 108. Livre d’or (1931) 305–17; Exposition coloniale (section portugaise); Olivier, Exposition 7:340–41; Deloncle, “La participation italienne.”

109. 109. Lebovics, True France 59–62.

110. 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. 111. “Panthéon de la France coloniale” (Olivier, “Philosophie” 293). Many of the same names figure in the Salles des Croisades at Versailles.

112. 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. 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. 114. Deloncle, “La continuité”; he also presided at a conference on Latin pronunciation (Olivier, Exposition 4:177).

115. 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. 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. 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. 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. 119. Nicoll 118–19; Olivier, Exposition 5.1:150–55, 5.2:1021–22.

120. 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. 121. “Le spiritualisme de notre Moyen Age s’est enrichi des leçons tragiques de nos Révolutions” (Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 51).

122. 122. “Ce monde qu’on prétend vieux, n’a que l’âge de ceux qui l’habitent” (Exposition internationale 23).

123. 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. 124. Peer 71–72, 148, 154–56; Lebovics, True France 164–71.

125. 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. 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. 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. 128. Artisans 1937; Exposition internationale 100; Exposition Paris 1937 1; Livre d’or (1937) 193–200, 211–17.

129. 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. 130. Peer 165; also Ezra 33–36; Exposition internationale 99.

131. 131. Exposition internationale 104–14; Livre d’or (1937) 185–92; Peer 97; Gerson.

132. 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. 133. Exposition internationale 145–48; Labbé, Exposition 8, 4:130–51; Centre rural.

134. 134. Peer 99–134. Not everyone found the effort successful (Maurice Barret).

135. 135. Labbé, Exposition 4:2–3; Exposition internationale 94–104; Livre d’or (1937) 205–24.

136. 136. Exposition internationale 100; Favier, pl. 30.

137. 137. Livre d’or (1937) 208; Béranger; Labbé, Exposition 1:ix; Album programme 40; Reallon 37.

138. 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. 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).

140. 140. Labbé, Exposition 4:87.

141. 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. 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. 143. Dupays 258; Lange 37–38.

144. 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. 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. 146. Peer 89–91.

147. 147. Letters dated 7 April 1935 and 12 January 1936 (ADR 8M83).

148. 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. 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. 150. Ezra 37–38; Yee, “Métissage.”

151. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 155. Labbé, Exposition 7:310.

156. 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. 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. 158. Livre d’or (1937) 219.

159. 159. Peer 131–32.

160. 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. 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. 162. Golan and Wakeman on “nostalgic modernism,” Saler on “medieval.”

163. 163. Labbé, Exposition 2:53–54, 406–17.

164. 164. De L’Estoile 73–204; Herbert 41–67; Verrier.

165. 165. Exposition internationale 29–32; Labbé, Exposition 5:372–77.

166. 166. Herbert 83–121; Peer 135–36, 144–53; Lebovics, True France 135–61; Jackson 125–30; August.

167. 167. Chefs-d’œuvre v–vi; medieval sculpture catalogued in Vitry.

168. 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. 169. Chefs-d’œuvre 569.

170. 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. 171. Rydell 62.

3. Between Paris and Saint-Denis

1. 1. E.g., Tharaud, Le fauteuil 66; “[an] amalgamation of opposites” (Hazard 1).

2. 2. Lot, Joseph Bédier 43; Nykrog 300–1; Gumbrecht 29; Duggan, “Franco-German” (no mention of Bédier). Corbellari’s assessment of “virulent” nationalism gets no closer to the issue (“Joseph Bédier, Philologist and Writer” 273).

3. 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. 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. 5. Interview, Christophe Bédier (25 July 2004); Adolphe Bédier 12–13, 90; Lobligeois.

6. 6. Hedo-Vivier 22–36; Pluchon 308; Valynseele 38. De Mahy’s uncle Denis-François Kervéguen was one of the clan’s few republicans (Hedo-Vivier 22–36).

7. 7. Gagneur, “Prosopographie” 108–9, 171–217, 284–300.

8. 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. 9. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 41.

10. 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].

11. 11. CFB, liasse 11; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 486; Lévy-Brühl 64; Charles-Roux 23; J. L. 207–8.

12. 12. De Mahy, Le régime politique; Hedo-Vivier 5–75, 84–85, 90, 93–95, 122–24; Binoche 493–94.

13. 13. Various letters from family members (CFB, liasse [109]); Dictionnaire biographique 2:131–32.

14. 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. 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. 16. Eve, Jeu politique 28–39.

17. 17. Ibid. 28–34.

18. 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. 19. Gagneur, “Prosopographie” 393–401.

20. 20. Nomdedeu-Maestri 1:57, 1:119, 2:47 (citing Le journal de la Réunion, 9 June 1905).

21. 21. Gasparin cited in “Lucien Gasparin”; Brunet cited in Urruty 27.

22. 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. 23. Eve, Jeu politique 52.

24. 24. Ibid. 10–11, 15.

25. 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. 26. Adolphe Bédier 80.

27. 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. 28. Leblond, La Réunion et Paris 6; Le peuple, 1 Feb 1911, p. 2 (transcribed in Ah-Koon and Duchêne 2:36).

29. 29. Hedo-Vivier 103–4.

30. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 34. Letter dated 23 November 1908 (BVC, f. 67r).

35. 35. Lot, Joseph Bédier 41–42; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 328.

36. 36. Compagnon 64–68; Charle, Naissance 183–200.

37. 37. Compagnon 36.

38. 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. 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, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 45. Corbellari makes a related analysis, reaching a somewhat different conclusion (Joseph Bédier 330–33).

46. 46. The Marquise: Baal, “Jaurès et les salons” 110. Bédier: letter to the Marquise, 13 August 1914 (BVC, f. 114).

47. 47. Lerner.

48. 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).

49. 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. 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. 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. 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 anti-German critiques (L’art allemand).

53. 53. Scènes et doctrines 87 (also in L’appel au soldat).

54. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 62. Barthou 54.

63. 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. 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. 65. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 480–82; Weber, Action française 412–13.

66. 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. 67. “Sur le plan patriotique, je suis avec eux. . . . Au moins avec ceux-là, on respire l’air de la patrie” (Rocher).

68. 68. Maurras, “Joseph Bédier.”

69. 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. 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. 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.

72. 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. 73. Blanchard; Wardhaugh.

74. 74. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 423; Solterer argues for a similar combination of paradoxical affiliations for Gustave Cohen.

75. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 80. Interview with Christophe Bédier (25 July 2004); letter to Joseph Texte, 21 January 1888 (Une amitié 77).

81. 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. 82. Combeau 369–70; Lycée de Saint-Denis (1867–68, 1870–71, 1871–72).

83. 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. 84. “L’honneur de notre pays fut toujours de prendre la défense du faible contre le fort” (Lycée de Saint-Denis [1901] 19).

85. 85. “Culte chevaleresque de l’honneur”; “Vieille France” (Lycée de Saint-Denis [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. 86. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1879–80) 22.

87. 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. 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. 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. 90. Garsault, fig. XVII. The lycée had accepted children of color since its founding in the early nineteenth century.

91. 91. “Militia est vita: la vie est une chevalerie” (CFB, liasse 11).

92. 92. “Il y a des sangs qui ne mentent jamais” (Adolphe Bédier 51).

93. 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. 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. 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. 96. “Tu as gardé pur notre vieux nom” (ibid. 51).

97. 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]).

98. 98. Fidus 343–44; Bourgin, “Joseph Bédier” 241; Tharaud, Le fauteuil 8; Roques, “Allocation.”

99. 99. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 119–20; Barquissau, “Joseph Bédier” 70–71.

100. 100. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 121.

101. 101. Adolphe Bédier 22; Mauduit-Bédier 2.

102. 102. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1894) 20, 31.

103. 103. “Soutenu seulement par le cri de vaillance: ‘Mont joie Saint-Denis” (Lycée de Saint-Denis [1924] 19).

104. 104. Bédier, Chanson de Roland, l. 973 (town of Saint-Denis), l. 2347 (hair of Saint Denis).

105. 105. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1911) 25.

106. 106. Lycée de Saint-Denis (1920) 24–26, (1921) 24 (citation), (1922) 28.

107. 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. 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 mère-patrie. C’est à leur imitation que j’ai surtout essayé de conformer ma vie” (Bédier, “Lettre”).

109. 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. 110. Berg; Cazemage; Foucque, “Apport” 132–34, “Inauguration”; Fournier; Taboulet and D’ Esme.

111. 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. 112. Leblond, Après l’exotisme de Loti 37, 39, 63, La France devant l’Europe 154– 62, 335–39.

113. 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. 114. Marius Leblond, Redressement 15–41, 271.

115. 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 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. 116. Marius Lebond, L’empire 219, 230.

117. 117. “Action par tous les moyens en faveur d’un patriotisme enthousiaste et chevaleresque” (ANF, 355 AP/55, Fonds Madelin, Dossier Leblond, Curriculum).

118. 118. Fournier 49, 53–56, 109–11, 126, 148, 252.

119. 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. 120. Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 25–40, 52–71 (postslavery), 72–122 (postcolony).

121. 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. 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. 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. 124. Fuma, “L’esclavage et le métissage.”

125. 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. 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. 127. Légendes épiques 3:269–70.

128. 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).

129. 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. 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. 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. 132. Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries 84, 109–12.

133. 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. 134. Leblond, “Au Public”; “Les pays d’ancienne Gaule”; La France devant l’Europe 180–88.

135. 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. 136. Leblond, “Paul Sérusier,” La vie, 15 February 1939 (cited in Fournier 225).

137. 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. 138. Leblond, Zézère x; Leconte de Lisle 315.

139. 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. 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, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 147. Angenot 168–72, 971.

148. 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. 149. E.g., “Causerie du Franc-Colon,” Le Salazien et Moniteur (23 August 1887). 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. 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. 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. 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. 153. “Un colon de pure race française” (Cohen, “Joseph Bédier, administrateur”); “sans l’ombre de métissage” (Johannet).

154. 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. 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. 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. 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.).

158. 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. 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. 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. 161. “A Joseph Bédier, vieux créole” (Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 130); Hart, in an affectionate obituary, compares Bédier to a “gentleman-planter” [planteur-gentilhomme] or “important lawyer” [grand avocat] of Saint-Denis.

162. 162. Bourde de la Rogerie 313; also “Joseph Bédier,” Petit Marseillais. Numerous obituaries collected in: CFB, C–XII and DAS, RF 51.280.

163. 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. 164. Honoré; Armand; Neu-Altenheimer et al. (on “k” in Réunionnais Creole).

165. 165. 7 October 1886 (Une amitié 25); Lucian Müller 2–3 (French edition published in 1882).

166. 166. November 1887 (Une amitié 69).

167. 167. Bédier refers to “reborn fears” [hantises renaissantes] associated with the return of “the old Makokote” (20 August 1888, Une amitié 103).

168. 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. 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. 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. 171. 22 March 1887 (Une amitié 47).

172. 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. 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. 174. “Brodeur de cirage” (22 March 1887 [Une amitié 46]).

175. 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. 176. Letter to Texte and Bouvier (August 1887) (Une amitié 61).

177. 177. Lot, Joseph Bédier 41. This memory could also apply to 1870.

178. 178. Letter to Texte, 1 August 1887; to Texte and Bouvier, August 1887 (Une amitié 58–59).

179. 179. Le Créole, 16 and 24 August 1887; Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 50.

180. 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. 181. Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 51; more strongly in “Lettre.”

182. 182. November 1887 (Une amitié 68).

183. 183. 3 December 1887 (Ibid. 73). The Leblonds attribute a similar painful regret to Leconte de Lisle (Leconte de Lisle 323–26).

184. 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. 185. 3 December 1887 (Une amitié 74, 76).

186. 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. 187. Barquissau, Une colonie 75. Similar comments in Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 129; Hart; Billiard 471, 485.

188. 188. “Des fougères bizarres de l’île Bourbon” (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 294).

189. 189. Monod, Exposition 2:179; Garsault 298–99; Olivier, Exposition 5.2:1015; Hoarau 107.

190. 190. Chambers; Patty.

191. 191. Emery and Morowitz 63.

192. 192. Texte: 8 September 1886 (Une amitié 17). Bédier: 20 August 1888 (ibid. 105).

193. 193. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 47n23.

194. 194. Bédier, “L’art religieux” 141.

195. 195. Vergès suggests that melancholy remains characteristic of Réunionnais discourse (“Island of Wandering Souls” 165); also Leblond, L’île enchantée 140.

196. 196. Michelet, Histoire de France 8:82.

197. 197. Leblond, “Sur Albert Dürer”; they also appreciate Dürer as a collector of indigenous arts.

198. 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. 199. Freud 375–77.

200. 200. Letter to Gaston Paris, 27 December 1887 (BNF, NAF MS 24431, f. 294v).

201. 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. 202. Estèbe; Hermann; Senex; CFB, liasses 112, 113, 114.

203. 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. 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. 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. 206. Bédier, “Lettre.”

207. 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).

208. 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. 209. E.g., essays and images in Nouvel-Kammerer.

210. 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. 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. 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. 213. “Véritable France, plus France que celle dont ils étaient partis” (ibid.); Foucque also underscores this point (“L’île”; “Joseph Bédier”).

214. 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. 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. 216. Grappe 271, 272–73, 274; others also reach this conclusion: Beaume; Fidus 343; “La vie studieuse.”

217. 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. 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.

219. 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. 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. 221. Cf. Aldrich, Vestiges 21–73; Emery and Morowitz; Robert Morrissey 294–97.

222. 222. Bédier, “Lettre.”

223. 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. 224. Letter to Texte, 20 August 1888 (Une amitié 105).

225. 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. 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.

227. 227. “Je ne sais trop le sens mélancolique et parfois douloureux” (speech in CFB, liasse 106).

228. 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. 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. 230. Bizer.

231. 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. 1. Espósito; Fleischman; Warren, “Post-philology” 29–35.

2. 2. Boeckh 10–11 (cited in Gossman, Between 278).

3. 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. 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. 5. Bédier, Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:35–36, Le lai xxxviii, xlii, Commentaires 264.

6. 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. 7. Renan, “Discours” 842–47. Renan had alluded to the evils of emigration already in 1870 (Réforme 121).

8. 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. 9. Renan, L’avenir 5, 126–53, 202–27.

10. 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. 11. Bédier, Études critiques x–xi; Renan, L’avenir 135.

12. 12. Letter to Prévost, 4 September 1913 (Marcel Prévost 2:348–50).

13. 13. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation” 892.

14. 14. ibid.

15. 15. Anderson 197–203, especially 200.

16. 16. Renan, L’avenir 221; Halbwachs (on individual and collective memory).

17. 17. Une amitié 73, 77; Bédier, “Édouard Bédier” 50 (see chapter 3).

18. 18. Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 9.

19. 19. ibid.

20. 20. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation” 891.

21. 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. 22. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:448.

23. 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. 24. Bédier, “La société” 906–7; Berry.

25. 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, “La tradition” 171, 353. Corbellari also comments on Bédier’s colorfully anachronistic style (Joseph Bédier 76–79).

26. 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. 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. 28. Bédier, Roman de Tristan et Iseut xii, “Sur le Roman” (CFB, liasse 27; ed. in Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 629–30).

29. 29. Cf. Milner; Nora, “Michelet.”

30. 30. Gossman, Between 258–60; Crossley.

31. 31. Michelet, “Héroïsme de l’esprit,” Œuvres complètes 4:40 (cited in Gossman, Between 284).

32. 32. Bédier presents his own work on the epic as a “rupture” with no history (Légendes épiques 1:182–83).

33. 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. 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. 35. Aarsleff.

36. 36. 3 October 1907 (BVC, ff. 46–48).

37. 37. Bédier, Légendes épiques 1:x.

38. 38. Ibid. 3:387; also Vinaver, A la recherche 31–34.

39. 39. Bédier, Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:319.

40. 40. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 375.

41. 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. 42. Renan, Souvenirs 760.

43. 43. Lot, Joseph Bédier 16, 39–40; Jaloux; Vinaver, Hommage 17; Boulenger 99 (Bédier prefaced his translation Romans de la Table Ronde, 1922).

44. 44. “Le temps de la perfection littéraire dure à peu près ce que dure l’indépen-dance d’une littérature à l’égard des littératures étrangères” (cited in Boulard 223).

45. 45. Letter to Texte, 13 May 1895 (Une amitié 236); Texte himself committed unequivocally to comparative literature (Jean-Jacques Rousseau 458); letter to Mâle, 23 May 1897, Une amitié 255; Études (which predicts the development of “post-national” Europe).

46. 46. Bédier, Fabliaux 58 (except where noted, references are to the 1st ed.).

47. 47. Paris, “Les contes orientaux” 81.

48. 48. Bédier, Fabliaux 35; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 102. Bassouto tales appeared in French in 1895 (Jacottet).

49. 49. Bédier, Fabliaux 215–17, 247.

50. 50. Ibid. 45–52; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 109.

51. 51. Marimoutou, Les engagés du sucre 20, 61, 168; Fuma, Histoire d’un peuple 231–42; Binoche 62–63.

52. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 57. I thank Andrew Cowell for prompting me to think more deeply about these contradictions.

58. 58. Bédier, Fabliaux 241.

59. 59. Ibid. 236.

60. 60. Lenient, “La poésie patriotique” 36, 38 (see chapter 2).

61. 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. 62. Bédier, Fabliaux 248–49; on the current state of fabliaux philology, Busby 1:437–63.

63. 63. Brunetière, “Les fabliaux” 199.

64. 64. Letter from Céline Du Tertre, 24 May 1893 (CFB, liasse [109]).

65. 65. Bédier, “La mort” 486, 494; again in Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:125.

66. 66. Bédier, Roman de Tristan par Thomas 1:v, 2:155, 168–87, 313.

67. 67. Ibid. 2:101–67; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 170–83 (Bédier would not even discuss theories of Persian connections, 180–81).

68. 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. 69. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen 82–84, 100, 489–90.

70. 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. 71. Bédier, Roman de Tristan et Iseut xii.

72. 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. 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. 74. Bédier, Roman de Tristan par Thomas 2:21–22, 26, 39 (citation).

75. 75. Ibid. 2:40–41.

76. 76. Bédier, “Hilaire Belloc.”

77. 77. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 157–62.

78. 78. Grevisse no. 1976.

79. 79. Cohen, “Joseph Bédier (1864–1938)” 10; Vinaver, Hommage 17; Gallagher; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 212–15, “Joseph Bédier: (d’)écrire la passion.”

80. 80. CFB, liasse 27 (Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 629–30).

81. 81. Paris, “Préface” iii, v.

82. 82. Bédier, Roman de Tristan et Iseut 220.

83. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 88. Ary Leblond in Congrès 100; Barquissau, Le roman colonial 9; Marius Leblond, Les grandes heures 193–95.

89. 89. Bongie, Islands and Exiles 96.

90. 90. Bernardin, Paul et Virginie 183, 187, 192–93.

91. 91. Paris, “Préface” ix, x, xi.

92. 92. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 10; Adolphe Bédier 56–57; D’Alméras (on the historical Mlle. Caillot [never named Virginie] and the shipwreck).

93. 93. Survivors identified the young officer as Longchamps de Montendre; their bodies were never found (D’Almeras 76–77).

94. 94. Bernardin, Paul et Virginie 179.

95. 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. 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 in quiries; the popular site was destroyed in 1869 to make way for a railroad (D’Alméras 76–77).

97. 97. Paris, “Préface” i.

98. 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. 99. Le nouveau journal de l’île de la Réunion (10 March 1910) (cited in Nomdedeu-Maestri 1:86); Boisneuf 105–15; Eve, Jeu politique 5–64; Chazelet 120–24, 135; Nomdedeu-Maestri 1:82–121, 2:44–47.

100. 100. Nomdedeu-Maestri 1:92, 2:47; see chapter 3.

101. 101. Letter to Brunetière, 26 August 1896 (BNF, NAF MS 25030, f. 285bis).

102. 102. “Un chef-d’œuvre,” Le peuple (2 September 1938).

103. 103. Paris, “Préface” i; Paris insinuates that Bédier may even have composed in Old French verse before translating himself into modern prose (v).

104. 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. 105. Bédier, Tristan et Iseut; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 290–96, 627; Colette 125–27.

106. 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. 107. Corbellari on the relation between Bédier and Denis de Rougement (Joseph Bédier 182).

108. 108. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 283–87, 661–63; Ridoux 817–37, 1027–29.

109. 109. Lacroix and Walter.

110. 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. 111. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 162–63; letters to Joseph Texte, 17 October and 31 December 1896 (Une amitié 248, 250–51).

112. 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. 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”).

114. 114. Bédier, “Quinze visages” 22. Elsewhere, Bédier termed lost originals “the geometric site of editors’ ignorance” (Commentaires 85n2).

115. 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. 116. Bédier, “La poésie” 812.

117. 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. 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. 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. 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. 121. Emery and Morowitz 143–69.

122. 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. 123. Guiard; personal archives of Mme. Anne Mauduit (cited in Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 330).

124. 124. Champion 679; Lognon 91; Grappe 290; Hanotaux, Histoire 1:xv; also Pays and Boulenger (Germany tried to “annex our epics,” 76).

125. 125. Barthou 36; Michaëlsson 296.

126. 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. 127. Foucque, “Apport” 130 (also Barquissau, “Esquisse” 64); Cazamian 344.

128. 128. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:366–67.

129. 129. Ibid. 3:268.

130. 130. Ibid. 3:269. Bédier echoes Gaston Paris here (“Roncevaux” 226).

131. 131. Instead of acknowledging Renan’s more recent formulation of national identity (1882), Bédier cites a few pages earlier Renan’s youthful agreement with the theory of oral composition.

132. 132. Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais, eighteenth-century naval officer and former governor of Bourbon.

133. 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. 134. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:269–70.

135. 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. 136. Letter to Mareschal de Bièvre, 8 October 1920 (reproduced in Ryckebusch 181).

137. 137. Ibid.

138. 138. Adolphe Bédier 8–9.

139. 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. 140. Ibid. 69–70.

141. 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. 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. 143. Corbellari likewise notes the spurious nature of the proof, and of Bédier’s entire thesis of origins (Joseph Bédier 7, 366–84).

144. 144. Ibid. 402–19.

145. 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. 146. E.g., Zumthor; Kay, Chanson de geste.

147. 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. 148. Lot, Joseph Bédier 27–28; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 488–89, 497–98.

149. 149. Roques, “Joseph Bédier” 561; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 364.

150. 150. Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 364.

151. 151. Foucque, “Joseph Bédier” 121.

152. 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. 153. Corbellari, “Traduire” 67; Bédier, Chanson, l. 850. Corbellari emphasizes Bédier’s secularization of Gautier’s Catholic approach (Joseph Bédier 365–66).

154. 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. 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. 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. 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. 158. Bédier, Commentaires 84–92; Duggan, “General Introduction” 24–26.

159. 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. 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. 161. Duggan, “General Introduction” 6–18.

162. 162. Paris, Extraits iv; Gautier, Chanson, 7th ed., xlv, 407; further examples of dialectal reconstruction in Ridoux 613–20; Taylor 52–53.

163. 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. 164. Bédier, Commentaires 37–39.

165. 165. Ibid. 241–44.

166. 166. Ibid. 244–50, 263–97.

167. 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. 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. 169. E.g., Marmier cited in Duggan, “Franco-German” 98; Michel, Rapport 21; Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” clxxiii.

170. 170. Bédier, “La société” 907, 920, 934.

171. 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. 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. 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. 174. Cited in Senex.

175. 175. Bédier, “Lettre.”

176. 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. 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 . . . Pensez-vous 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. 178. Adolphe Bédier 93; Marius Leblond, Les îles sœurs 126; Lycée de Saint-Denis (1880–81).

179. 179. Fournier 17.

180. 180. Bédier, Discours (ADR GB201).

181. 181. Cazemage, “La vie” 112.

182. 182. ADR 8M86; ADR 7J1.

183. 183. Foucque, “Inauguration” 175; Cazemage, “La vie” 114.

184. 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. 185. Hirel 15.

186. 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 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. 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. 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. 189. Hoepffner; Pesenti Rossi; Craig 195–290 (on Maugain at 280; donations from the Marquise at 241).

190. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 195. Letter dated 27 June 1920 (CFB, liasse 112)

196. 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. 197. Corbellari, “Traduire” 63n1; Short 42.

198. 198. Duggan, “General Introduction” 12, 26–28, 33–34; Short 45–46; Corbellari, Joseph Bédier 364n98 (citing Segre).

199. 199. Short 42.

200. 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. 201. Short 47–50.

202. 202. Duggan, “General Introduction” 36–37; Taylor; K. Murray; Burland; Busby 1:368–404. Meanwhile, Gautier is also back in circulation (2003).

203. 203. “Je n’ai pas le sens du discontinu” (Bédier, “Le moyen âge” 9).

5. A Creole Epic

1. 1. Mathieu (and others in this collection); Marimoutou, “Langues étrangères.”

2. 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. 3. Glissant, Discours 190–201, La cohée 74–75.

4. 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. 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. 6. Glissant, Poétique 216; also Intention 288, Discours 199, 278, 452.

7. 7. Glissant, Une nouvelle région 140–41; see also Leupin, “L’ancien français.”

8. 8. Glissant, Intention 207.

9. 9. Glissant, Poétique 191.

10. 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. 11. Gautier, “Histoire d’un poëme” vii.

12. 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. 13. Bédier, Chanson x.

14. 14. Bédier, Chanson xii–xiii; related comments in course notes (CFB, liasse 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. 15. Bédier, Chanson xii.

16. 16. Ibid. Vitet expressed a similar esthetic appreciation in 1852 (853, 864).

17. 17. Corbellari, “Traduire” 65. Corbellari notes linguistic similarities between the Roland and Tristan translations (“Traduire” 81).

18. 18. Leupin, La passion 164.

19. 19. Corbellari, “Traduire” 69, 75.

20. 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. 21. Bédier, Chanson l. 3987, p. 331.

22. 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. 23. Nichols, Romanesque Signs 149.

24. 24. Bédier, Chanson ll. 600, 818, 952, 1532, 1659, 1784.

25. 25. Bédier, Commentaires 303. Gautier made the opposite choice (Chanson, 1st ed., p. 49).

26. 26. Bédier often chooses style over philology (e.g., Bédier, “Réponse” 212; Vinaver, A la recherche 31–47; Corbellari, “Traduire” 78–79).

27. 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. 28. Lafont on the ideological implications of Bédier’s phrase (2:271–72).

29. 29. Bédier, Légendes épiques 3:452.

30. 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. 31. Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” 906.

32. 32. Bédier, “La poésie” 822.

33. 33. Moignet, Brault and Short all follow Bédier; a few criticized Bédier’s grammar (Clédat, review of Commentaires, 152).

34. 34. Fustel, “De la manière” 245.

35. 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).

36. 36. Le 75e anniversaire 13, 43–44, 56–59; Hartog 170–95; Weber, “Gauls versus Franks” 18–19.

37. 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 tenth-century France.

38. 38. Walker 128–29; De Mandach notes the same possibility (44).

39. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 44. On the history of the Mosquée, Aldrich, Vestiges 51–54; Kepel 64–76; Mac-Master 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. 45. Weiss 55.

46. 46. E.g., Marzouki; Bercovi-Huard; Brault 1:176, passim.

47. 47. Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries 15–45; Boutet; Leupin, La passion 154–79; Haidu (especially 55–59, 128–33, 175); Cowell 102–14; Kaye.

48. 48. Bloch, Etymologies 107.

49. 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. 50. Grabar; reviews of object theory from a medieval perspective in Cowell (1–51) and Sponsler.

51. 51. E.g., practices of tribute payments between Muslims and Christians that lie behind Roland’s early scenes (Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries 15–24); French and Iberian artistic forms that manifest cultural “mixing” (Snyder; Dodds, “Islam,” Architecture 83–116).

52. 52. Constable, especially 169–81; Liu 113–29, 175–78 Jacoby.

53. 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. 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. 55. Rey 782–83; cf. crowning of Erec in Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide l. 6651.

56. 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. 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. 58. Ibn Zubayr, cited in Gil 313n56; further examples in Serjeant 167–68.

59. 59. Constable 198–99; Serjeant 196, 209, 211; Renart ll. 4782–85.

60. 60. Dodds, “Islam” 30–31; Holcomb; St. Aubyn 71–74, 79, 86; Nees 147–257; Shalem, The Oliphant 8–49.

61. 61. Goldschmidt 1:33–35, no. 123 (thirteenth-century; walrus ivory carved with images of royalty; currently in Salzburg); Mas’ūdī 8.

62. 62. E.g Bestiary 39–43; Kaske 124–26.

63. 63. Brault 1:176. I elaborate more extensively on these issues in “The Noise of Roland.”

64. 64. This is first time that Roland refers to religious, rather than ethnic, identity (Brault 1:179).

65. 65. Nichols, Romanesque Signs 171; as Burland points out, Roland never considers that he might be forgotten (30).

66. 66. Burger 116; Cowell 104–5.

67. 67. Brault 1:184.

68. 68. Bédier, Chanson ll. 1059, 1070, 1101, 1171.

69. 69. E.g., Pauphilet 178; Burger; Nichols, “Roland’s Echoing Horn”; Kostoroski; Ebitz, “The Oliphant”; Magnúsdóttir 321–71.

70. 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. 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. 72. Hoffman; Shalem, The Oliphant 136–37.

73. 73. Ebitz, “Secular to Sacred”; Shalem, Islam Christianized 132–33, 248–49, 394.

74. 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. 75. Ebitz, “The Oliphant”; “The Medieval Oliphant.”

76. 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 non-elephantine 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. 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. 78. Bédier, Chanson ll. 1423–37; Fritz 84–90, 116–28, 304–7, 311.

79. 79. Nichols, Romanesque Signs 180–86; also Brault 1:263.

80. 80. Haidu 35.

81. 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. 82. Nichols, Romanesque Signs 200; Vance, Mervelous Signals 75–85, “Style and Value” 89–93; Leupin, La passion 145.

83. 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. 84. Vance, Mervelous Signals 75–76, “Style and Value” 89–94; also Bloch, Etymologies 103–5; Nichols, “The Interaction”; Haidu 18.

85. 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. 86. Haidu 148–51.

87. 87. Eg. Haidu 189–92; Cowell 103–6; Vance, Mervelous Signals 61–62, 69, 82–83.

88. 88. Haidu 150.

89. 89. Similarly, the narrator remains neutral over at least one Saracen death: “Death takes him, regardless of who cries or laughs” (l. 3364).

90. 90. Kinoshita notes that Charles’s army includes recently conquered peoples (Medieval Boundaries 29–30).

91. 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. 92. Kühnel 19, 85, 87, 88; Ebitz, “The Oliphant” 133–34; Golvin (on the oliphant of Saint-Sernin).

93. 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. 94. E.g., Nichols, Romanesque Signs 188, 199; Leupin, La passion 145; Magnúsdóttir 375–76.

95. 95. Kinoshita, “‘Pagans are wrong’” 100, also Medieval Boundaries 42–44.

96. 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. 97. Haidu 166–67; Mickel on some of the trial’s broader legal contexts.

98. 98. Ibid. 159, also 152–77; Halverson.

99. 99. Ibid. 162; also Halverson 667.

100. 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. 101. Bloch, Medieval French Literature and Law, especially 108–41.

102. 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. Bédier maintained the Oxford text in his early editions (1922, 1924, l. 2883), but later changed (1937; Commentaires 192).

103. 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. 104. Vance, Mervelous Signals 58–59; on specters of conversion, Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries 26–28.

105. 105. Jenkins l. 3907n; Haidu 168–69.

106. 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. 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. 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. 109. Haidu 179–80, 162.

110. 110. Ibid. 179.

111. 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).