Western Novels as Children's Literature in Nineteenth-Century France

From 1850 to 1889, French writers and publishers produced large numbers of western novels that were eventually considered children's literature. An analysis of western novel titles shows how this literature objectified Nouveau Monde and subjected it to a mode of vision imposed on children. Considerable numbers of adventure novels set in the Americas were published in France during the latter half of the nineteenth century. James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales had become regular favourites among French readers, and the success of these books prompted writers and publishers in France to produce similar works. The western novel in France eventually became associated with children's literature, and, like other forms of children's literature, it fell out of favour with the cultural elite. We cannot know what French children really thought about the characters that roamed the frontiers of the New World, but we can infer why this literature was relegated to children and what was the ideological function of its increased production. In this essay, I address the history of the western novel as children's literature in France in three parts. First, I present a brief publishing history of the western novel in France, noting the permanence of Cooper in the literary field and the increased production of westerns from 1850 to 1889. I use the terms position and position-taking developed in the work of Pierre Bourdieu to differentiate the competitive strategies of writers and publishers from the works they produced to realize those strategies. Next, I look at references to Cooper in other nineteenth-century French texts as a gauge of the western's changing literary value. What other authors say about Cooper and their reading of him suggests that the kind of writing he represented was eventually considered suitable only for children. In the final part of my argument, I discuss how this writing addressed children through a semiotic analysis of western novel titles. I show that the western novel can be understood as the instrument of a double colo nization: a colonialist gaze that appropriates Nouveau Monde and dominates the eye of the child. Though the study of historical children's literature does not address the needs and interests of children today (as Peter Hunt has objected), it is nevertheless worthwhile to explore how the production, classification, and (de)valuation of children's literature as such occur within a wider sphere of social and cultural relations. Before 1850, the adventure novel set in the wilderness of the Americas, especially North America and the United States, belonged to James Fenimore Cooper, an American author. Coopermania struck Europe in 1823 with the publication of The Pioneers, and in France no less than six editions of Cooper's complete works had been published midway through the century. A whole new body of literature about the New World had formed with Les pionniers, Le dernier des Mohicans, La prairie, Le tueur de daims, and Le lac Ontario. The Leatherstocking Tales were so successful that, in a review of La prairie, one French critic dubbed Cooper le Walter Scott des sauvages. Cooper occupied a unique position in the literary field in France, and his novels about the American West delineated a new space for literary production. As Ray Allen Billington has pointed out, European authors quickly seized the opportunity to exploit this new market (30-32). In 1850, a French writer by the name of Gabriel Ferry published Le coureur des bois, a novel that recounts the adventures of a French-Canadian woodsman who roams through northern Mexico hunting buffalo, skirmishing with Indians, and bringing outlaws to justice. The success of Ferry's novel demonstrates that the genre introduced to France by Cooper was no longer something that could only be imported from the New World. The appearance of similar titles by other writers after Ferry's death indicates that the space of positions in the literary field had been transformed by Ferry's success. …

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