Consciousness of the Exotic and Exotic Consciousness in Chateaubriand

Chateaubriand’s many works set in exotic places speak in several voices: that of l’enchanteur, the spell-binding descriptive prose poet and rhetorician; of the scholar drawing on accounts by travelers and historians; and of the covert autobiographer. Less attention has been paid to Chateaubriand’s representations of the voices of the ethnic other, particularly, of Native Americans. This essay examines instances when his depiction of Native American discourse is patently ventriloquized, distorted, or subverted. Nevertheless – if only through psychic projection and fantasized identification – Chateaubriand’s apocalyptic vision conveys real affinities between the experience of French aristocrats under the Revolution, and tribes facing colonization, expropriation of their lands, and genocide. (LMP)