What happens when the liberty of ancient nobility collides with the revolutionary ideals of equality? This groundbreaking study explores how the American, French, Haitian, and Greek Revolutions redefined freedom—and how French Romantic figure Chateaubriand grappled with that transformation. Tracing his travels across England, North America, and the Mediterranean, this book uncovers Chateaubriand’s seductive visions of “paradises lost,” which were taken up, challenged, and reimagined by Anglophone and Hispanic writers.
From Charlotte Brontë to Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Byron to Bolaño authors found in Chateaubriand a conflicted but powerful voice at the crossroads of liberty, race, religion, and empire. This is the first comprehensive study to situate Chateaubriand within the histories of colonialism and global revolution, revealing a literary legacy that remains startlingly relevant in today’s struggles over equality.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
"Richly researched and beautifully crafted, this dazzling study of Chateaubriand’s unbounded imagination traces a transnational legacy whose vibrant call for freedom still echoes today."
“Through a dazzling transnational approach, Fabienne Moore offers an illuminating reading of Chateaubriand’s fiction and essays on the Americas, Moorish Spain, and the Mediterranean.”
"An exciting and original study that not only offers new insights into what has previously been written about Chateaubriand, but also invites readers to examine various colonial subtexts of Chateaubriand’s work."
List of Illustrations ix List of Abbreviations xi Introduction: Equivocations, or Chateaubriand Exposed 1 1 Chateaubriand: Who Am I? 18 2 North America, Between Heaven and Hell 50 3 The Rival British Empire 78 4 Multicultural Mediterranean in Chateaubriand and Byron’s Work 103 5 Moorish Spain 129 6 Latin America Writes Back 14 Conclusion 164 Transatlantic Epilogue 168 Appendix 179 Timeline 185 Acknowledgments 191 Notes 193 Bibliography 223 Index 237
FABIENNE MOORE is a professor of French at the University of Oregon in Eugene. She is the author of Prose Poems of the Enlightenment: Delimiting Genre.
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