Alexandre Dumas's Odyssey: Race, Slavery, Narrative

Abstract

AbstractAlexandre Dumas père left behind few explicit reflections on race and slavery in the modern world, but he was not silent on these subjects. Before the tireless deeds of the musketeers, or the vengeful fantasies of the Count of Monte-Cristo, there was Georges, an 1843 novel of race and slave rebellion set on the island of Mauritius. This essay explores questions of homecoming, homelessness, and recognition in the novel. It argues that the text incorporates a series of references to the Homeric Odyssey and that these come to illuminate the complexities of a problem faced by metropolitan French novelists of the nineteenth century: What manner of plot might grasp, or fail to grasp, the interlocking injustices of racism and slavery? After all, Georges does not conclude with homecoming and recognition, as the model of the Odyssey might imply, but with homelessness.