CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Vishnevskaya, Polina |
|---|---|
| Title | Antisemitism and the Construction of French National Mythology during the Dreyfus Affair: The Case of Psst...! (1898-1899) by Jean-Louis Forain and Caran d'Ache |
| Summary | The thesis aims at examining the process of constructing French national mythology through the usage of antisemitic stances during the Dreyfus Affair, taking as the main source the anti-Dreyfusard and antisemitic illustrated journal Psst… ! (1898-1899), launched by two famous caricaturists of the late 19th century France – Jean-Louis Forain and Emmanuel Poiré, better known under the pseudonym Caran d’Ache. The research argues that the French national mythology is formulated through the usage of the populist binary worldview dividing the world into “good” and “evil”, as well as using the figure of the “enemy” for defining the nation in the opposition. The “ maliciousȁ d; part of this polarized worldview and an embodiment of the ultimate “enemy” in Psst… ! appears to be embodied in the antisemitic “Jewish” myth. The analysis of the multilayered construction of the French national mythology in Psst… ! allows to demonstrate the complexity of the antisemitism, which acquired an unprecedented scale during the Dreyfus Affair. The latter, in its deep, was shaped by the profound uncertainty in the face of modernity and its transformations on the part of the French population, as well as by the need to find the definition of “Frenchness” in the context of the ideologically heterogeneous and divided country. |
| Supervisor | Miller, Michael, L.; Shapira, Elana. |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/vishnevskaya_polina.pdf |
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