Louis Bertrand's le sang des races (1889)‎ : a new historicist reading

Abstract EN

Le Sang des Races (1899) has been considered as the first realist novel of the French colonial fiction written by Louis Bertrand.

The present paper aims to reveal the close relationship between the novel and its historical context by applying two concepts which are part of New Historicism: they are namely Historicity of Texts and Textuality of History.

The former stresses that a literary work is a product and a functional component of the historical and political conditions of its time.

It is a reaction and an opposition to the Fin de Siècle ethos of the decadent movement characterizing France.

It is also the embodiment of the Latin myth which is itself conceived as an outlet of the crisis.

Textuality of History means that the novel is subject to the process of historical change and a constituent of that historical change.

Le Sang des Races is a discourse which chronicles and records the shift from a military into a civilian regime and the transformation of Algeria into a colonie de peuplement, also the one which embodies the spirit of assimilation as stipulated by such segregationist laws as the Warnier project and the Senatus-consulte.