Of False Napoleons, and Other Political Prostheses: Writing Oppositionally from the Second Empire

Looking at Prosper Mérimée's supposed history, Episode de l'histoire de Russie: Les Faux Démétrius (1852), and showing it to be an undetected caricature of the French Second Empire, this article explores whether it is possible to write oppositionally from the political "center." Furthermore, it investigates the entanglements of irony, caricature, intention, and symbolic power in opposional texts. (SDC)