Alsace Lorraine and the patriotic novels of the French Nationalist Revival from 1905 to 1914
Description
In response to certain social, political, and historical circumstances at the beginning of the twentieth century, there arose in France what many historians today identify as the 'French Nationalist Revival.' Central to the revived nationalist mood was the desire to exact revenge from Germany for the defeat of France in 1870 and the subsequent cession of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. Several authors such as Maurice Barres, Paul Acker, and Georges Ducrocq--only to name a few--adopted the cause of the Alsatians and Lorrainers then living under the German occupation and actively fostered this spirit of revanchisme in their widely circulated literary writings of the period To provide the necessary introduction to the ten novels of occupation under consideration, this dissertation first establishes the historical background of France from 1870 to 1914 and the literary influence of French nationalist and anti-militarist writings from 1870 to 1904. Following this, the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century concept of the French race as related to the novels of occupation is elucidated since the perceived racial difference between the French and German peoples was essential to the nationalists' protest against the annexation. It is then shown how the nationalist authors attempted to convince their reading public of both the injustice of the occupation and its constant duty to the ceded French population by portraying the German occupiers as tyrannical oppressors determined to subjugate the provinces and by embellishing the resistance of the inhabitants, who remain loyal to France through their closeness to the soil of Alsace and Lorraine and their fidelity to the memory of their deceased French ancestors In this dissertation, it is demonstrated that these novels, which are undeniably ideological, played a pertinent role in shaping the nationalist mood in France in the years immediately preceding the First World War. Through the analysis of particular recurrent patterns of rhetoric, discourse, plot, character, terminology, and images, this dissertation reveals how the authors influenced and even manipulated the renewed militaristic and patriotic mood in France at the turn of the century and contributed to the enthusiasm with which the French nation went to war in 1914