Student: Lauren Scott
Graduation date: May 2016
Type: Area of Interest (double major)
Date approved: November 2013
Go to concentration landing page
Summary
French culture has been a dominating force throughout global history for many centuries, however this cultural influence in not restrained to borders of l’Hexagone, it permeates the globe through all of the Francophone countries. A country is considered Francophone because it is french speaking, due to their history’s deep ties to France. These countries became Francophone though colonization. French colonization, beginning as early as 1534 and lasting until 1980, with the most active period during the 1800s, mostly stemmed from religious and Republican desires (Daughton 2006). These two motivations often contradicted each other and caused a great deal of political conflict during this period. However, there existed an overarching concept in both French Catholic and Republican ideologies that it was their responsibility to their ideology as the superior race to spread their beliefs to the rest of the world and to conquer and civilize these inferior groups. This was the grand motivator that lead France to seek other nations to add to their empire. However, it was for specific interests in trade and political world dominance that led France to situate their colonies where they did. Though many of these once french colonies are now independent states, they still have close relations to France and its culture has left a great mark on their own.
French literature has been an object of national pride for France’s citizens throughout history, and this extends to the greater francophone nations (Kay et al. 2003). Francophone countries, especially France, have also been one of the largest contributors to the collective global literature and philosophical thought communities. The large importance of literature in french culture makes it an powerful tool for investigating certain aspects of french thought and culture; these overarching ideas present in a country’s culture are most prominently represented in their classic works of literature. Going further, through examining a nation’s culture through literature, we can gain greater insight into their attitudes and behaviors. “Literature is a powerful force in communicating ideas in sometimes an imperceptible but pervasive way,” and can provide insight into both the environmental attitudes present within a culture but also how these attitudes are being acted upon, through people’s behaviors, as highlighted by the Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors SGE Theme page (Shafer et al. 2013).
Within my concentration I hope to explore the environmental discourse in francophone countries through the cultural magnifying lense of literature as a means of interpreting how they view the natural world. This exploration will focus specifically on their definition of “nature” (i.e. their social construction of nature) as well as the prominent themes of the nature vs. culture, or similarly, the pastoral vs. urban dichotomy in many works of classic francophone literature (Ryder 2013). Going further, through looking at the conceptions of nature within the cultural francophone environmental discourses, I hope to examine how it has changed over time and draw connections between these ideas of nature and the national attitude towards the environment and environmental issues. The relevance of doing so is highlighted well by the Environmental Discourses SGE Theme page: Current statements of environment and nature are informed by the narrative of these words, meaning that studying the narrative (or cultural history) behind these words can shed light onto the current conceptions of of these topics (Holz 2013). Studying the ideas behind these Big Words in environmental discourses will provide the contextual background for situated problems because environmental discourses creates the foundation for studying modern environmental issues.
As mentioned above, an overarching theme in many works of francophone literature is a the nature vs. culture or pastoral vs. urban dichotomy (Ryder 2013). A time and place where this idea can be situated and put into context is France in the 19th century, a prolific time in for french literature where this concept was widely prominent and included important periods of Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism (Kay et al. 2003). At this time, many authors were moving from the rural countryside, to the urban cultural hub of Paris. This physical shift from the simplified rural land that they called home to the urban intellectual jungle greatly was reflected in their works and set the tone for how they perceived the two areas. The natural landscape of the rural countryside was seen as the simplistic land of origin, their birthplace, the land of physical creation; whereas the city, though viewed as a cultural hub and the land of human assemblage, was considered both complex and dirty in both the visual and metaphorical sense. Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, a french poet of this epoch, clearly illustrates the pastoral vs. urban dichotomy when describing the two separate landscapes in his works (Ryder 2013). His descriptions of urbanism is bleak and apocalyptic: “What does it matter to us, my heart, the sheets of blood and of red-hot coals, and a thousand murders, and long howls of rage . . . I feel myself tremble, the old earth, on me who am more and more yours! The earth melts” (2013). This dark display of urbanism is greatly contrasted with remembrance and pining for his rural past: “Nostalgia for the thick young arms of pure green” (2013). These small snippets provide a small window into a central idea of this time period, but would provide greater significance to this great divide between nature and culture when compared to the works of other prolific writers of the time. Going further, through this concentration, I would investigate how this idea of separation between urban versus pastoral landscapes compares to the modernized France today, where the lines between rural and urban are now blurred in a current industrialized state.
Another context in which the depiction of the natural world through the nature vs. culture dichotomy could be situated is through the depiction of the plight of Northern African immigrants in France during the 20th century and their established perception of “Europe as civilization and North Africa as a wilderness” through the works of Maghrebi novelists (Decouvelaere 2011). Similar to the cited essay by Stephanie Decouvelaere, in which she compares the works of three Maghrebi novelists and the civilization/wilderness binary that they establish resulting from the effects of European colonization in Northern Africa, this concentration could examine to what degree the effects of European colonization had on the Maghrebi perception of the natural world. In her essay, Decouvelaere highlights the common theme of nature being identified as home or a place of origin in contrast with civilization being the place of human assemblage, where the large percent of humanity seems to accumulate. This exemplifies that this separation between nature and culture is an overarching theme within francophone cultures, as magnified through literature, and merits further investigation to see the broader implications this division has on these society’s perceptions and attitudes to issues pertaining to the natural environment in whole.
Daughton, J. P. 2006. An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Decouvelaere, Stephanie. 2011. “Exiting the Scene of Civilization: Wilderness as Implied Framework in Three Francophone Maghrebi Novels of Immigration.” Romance Studies 29 (3) (July): 164–176. doi:10.1179/174581511X13063236265127.
Holz, Zach. 2013. “Environmental Discourses.” Situating the Global Environment. Lewis & Clark Environmental Studies Program. https://sge.lclark.edu/situated-themes/environmental-discourses/
Kay, Sarah, Terence Cave, and Malcolm Bowie. 2003. A Short History of French Literature. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Lehan, Richard Daniel. 2005. Realism and Naturalism: The Novel in an Age of Transition. Univ of Wisconsin Press.
Ryder, Andrew. 2013. “BAUDELAIRE, RIMBAUD, TOOMER The Urban Stranger and ‘Bad Blood’ in French and African American Modernism.” Callaloo 36 (3): 802–810.
Shafer, Samantha, Jhana Taylor Valentine, Sarah Ruggiere, and Finn Marino-Sweeney. 2013. “Environmental Attitudes and Behavior.” Situating the Global Environment. Lewis & Clark Environmental Studies Program. https://sge.lclark.edu/situated-themes/environmental-attitudes-and-behavior/
Questions
Temporal Comparisons
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Descriptive: In what ways is “‘nature” represented in contemporary francophone literature?In what ways was it represented in the 19th century with the advent of the naturalist literary movement? In what other francophone literary periods was there a prominent change in discourses surrounding nature in francophone literature?
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Explanatory: How has the concept of nature in francophone countries evolved over time? How has literature in francophone countries reflected this common conception over time? How do the two conceptions noted in the previous question compare, and in what way is this a reflection of environmental discourses of the times compared? In other words, based on what was discovered from the first descriptive question, what can we infer about the types of environmental discourses used at these periods in francophone cultures?
Spatial Comparisons
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Descriptive: What are the differences between the environmental discourses present in France versus the francophone countries which were once under the political control of France in the time of colonialism?
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Explanatory: To what extent has French thought, through a history of colonialism, influenced the current ideas of nature and the natural world in the Maghreb (i.e. Northern Africa)?
Bigger Context
- Explanatory: In what way do both the past and the current conceptions of nature/the natural world among francophone countries and their respective cultures shape attitudes towards and response to environmental issues?
Arts and humanities courses
- HIST 261 (Global Environmental History, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- FREN 330 (Francophone Literature, 4 credits), fall 2014. This is a course specifically on francophone literature, which is extremely pertinent to my concentration, and will provide a good base knowledge for period and movements within this classification of literature. I can potentially use works read and analyzed in this course towards answering the my concentration question.