Colonizer or Colonized by Melzer Sara E.;

Author:Melzer, Sara E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Imitation and the “Classical” Path

This chapter examines a second escape route, which ultimately led to the ideal that scholars have labeled “classical.” This term, however, is misleading for three reasons.1 First, it implies that this cultural ideal emerged only in relation to the Ancient World. Second, it assumes only one side of that relationship—kinship and similarity. Third, it implies that the nature of France’s relationship to the Ancient World was simply cultural, and not colonial. This chapter shows the limits of these assumptions by demonstrating how the classical ideal emerged out of the nation’s struggle to grapple with its colonial and cultural dilemmas in relation to both the New World and the Ancient World. I will argue that the classical art of imitation evolved as a defensive structure to guard against the threats on both ends of the spectrum. To colonize the New World, many of the relations portrayed the sauvages as an “us.” However, this similarity risked endangering the French nation, constituting a danger from below. To decolonize from the Ancient World, many of the cultured elite saw the Ancients as an imperial “them,” thus constituting a danger from above. The elite thus sought to carve out a dignified and independent cultural identity for the nation in between both poles. I of course do not wish to reduce the classical simply to this dynamic, but rather to argue that it forms part of a larger network of contributing factors.

In presenting this second escape route, I do not mean to imply that its proponents were composed of an entirely separate group from those who put forward the first route. Frequently, the same lettrés proposed two conflicting escape routes because they harbored conflicting stances toward the Ancients and imitation. I see these vacillations not as contradictions but as a source of richness and a way into the deepest dilemma these writers faced: how to disentangle their self-understanding from the derogatory narratives that were embedded in the models they were imitating. How to see themselves through their own eyes?

The haunting memory of the nation’s barbaric past was hard to erase for two reasons. First, the charge of barbarism came from two different interlocking stories: (1) the seventeenth century drama of colonizing the New World barbarian; and (2) the archaic drama about the nation’s own colonized past. In itself, neither story would have probably made a great impact on the French consciousness. But each story gained traction by resonating with the other and creating an interlocking dynamic, thus stimulating an anxiety about the barbarian deep within the French psyche. Their combined effect shaped the evolution of France’s own culture, pushing it toward a classical ideal.

The second reason the nation’s barbaric past had a strong grip on the French consciousness was because the elite were largely trapped in a mental frame that privileged the past over the present and the future. The only way the moderns could truly win out over the ancients and escape the legacy of their past would be to

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