Strenae (Jul 2015)

Le choix impossible : éléments pour l’explication d’une non-réception du roman-feuilleton L’Amour du uhlan de Karl May

  • Éric Leroy du Cardonnoy

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4000/strenae.1438
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

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L'Amour du Uhlan was a serial novel published in weekly installments between September 1883 and October 1885. After a brief overview of the historical context and the serial novel’s evolution in France and Germany during this period, we will see that the portrayal of the French, but in many ways the Germans as well, operates according to the genre’s binary logic, independently of nationality. The clichés traditionally accepted by both countries for several centuries are used repeatedly, with characters of the "scoundrel" class relentlessly uttering negative and pejorative stereotypes, thus making it possible to establish a difference in the clichés presented between the levels of enunciation and diegesis. The female characters who drive the plot from the beginning will experience the impossible choice of having to choose their national belonging. The French and France are presented amid their colonial ventures in a way that contradicts the supposed aims of such an adventure. Finally, Karl May becomes a spokesman committed to cosmopolitanism and strong pacifism, thereby creating an innovative work, which however did not reverberate in a France faced with defeat.

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