Losing the War and Losing Heart: 1870-71 and the Fiction of Defeat

Abstract

This article sets out to demonstrate that the search for a novelistic language which would be able to express the experience of the Franco-Prussian War leads many French writers to renounce the epic: thus the fiction of defeat becomes a defeat of fiction. Unable to rewrite the epic of Roland and the glorious tale of French revenge, many writers leave the battlefield and the effects produced by its spectacular setting, and seek their heroes elsewhere. When French writers experience difficulties in turning battlefield action into fiction, they choose to put the narrative focus of their writing in the simple setting of a familial interior, where the heart of France beats. This change of setting consequently reshapes the narrative forms and imagery of war: Ulysses and young warriors abandoned, it is now the difficult battles of Penelope and of old men that embody the heroism of the conflict. Encouraging a private and internalised vision of the battle scene, 1870-71 marks a turning point in the history of representations of war. By analysing fictions in which battles essentially take place in the hearts of the characters, we will suggest that this sentimental and figurative interpretation of war aims at the souls of French citizens and thereby strikes a responsive chord.