Satirical Sauvages: Indigenous North Americans in Eighteenth-century French and British Prose Satire, 1702–1763
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation presents four case studies that explore the use of information and ideas about Amerindigenous peoples in satirical literature from eighteenth-century France and England. Through studies of texts published between 1703 and 1763, I trace a divestment of proto-ethnographic verisimilitude in European satire featuring Amerindigenous characters: over the course of the century, the representation of Amerindigenous characters in satire bears increasingly little relation to the representation of Amerindigenous peoples in authoritative proto-ethnographic literature from the period, a development I argue is related to the rapid expansion of consumer print culture at the time. The first chapter, on the Dialogues Curieux by the Baron de Lahontan (1703) discusses a truly sui generis text that blends satire and proto-ethnography. Through the literary form of the Lucianic dialogue, Lahontan represents a fictionalized version of conversations he had with the Wendat leader Kondiaronk in New France, using information about Wendat (“Huron”) culture to support his critique of French social norms. The second chapter argues that the parody of travel literature in Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is effectively a form of satire aimed at the production and consumption of knowledge in a burgeoning public sphere of print. The third chapter considers the Lettres Iroquoises by Maubert de Gouvest (1752), an imitation of Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes (1721), in which Maubert invents a pseudo-ethnography of the “Iroquois” that facilitates discussion of prominent themes in contemporary books and newspapers. The final chapter presents the Memoirs of the life and adventures of Tsonnonthouan, King of the Roundhead Indians (1763), an anonymously-authored imitation of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–1767). Although Tsonnonthouan draws extensively from an English translation of an authoritative proto-ethnographic text by Pierre-François Xavier de Charlevoix, it presents a spurious generic “Indian” constructed out of information about different Amerindigenous groups. These studies contribute to an understanding of representations of Amerindigenous peoples in European popular literature during the eighteenth century and to the theorization of satire’s relations with parody and irony. They also raise questions about the relationship between scientific and normative knowledge-production and the history of the book in the modern era. Cette thèse présente quatre études de cas qui explorent l'utilisation d'informations et d'idées sur les peuples amérindiens dans la littérature satirique de la France et de l'Angleterre du dix-huitième siècle. Quatre textes publiés entre 1703 et 1763, exemplifient un abandon de la vraisemblance proto-ethnographique dans la satire européenne mettant en scène des personnages amérindiens : au cours du siècle, la représentation des personnages amérindiens dans la satire a de moins en moins de rapport avec la représentation des peuples amérindiens dans la littérature proto-ethnographique faisant autorité à l'époque, une évolution liée à l'expansion rapide de la culture de consommation imprimée à l'époque. Le premier chapitre, consacré aux Dialogues Curieux du Baron de Lahontan (1703), traite d'un texte véritablement sui generis qui mêle satire et proto-ethnographie. À travers la forme littéraire du dialogue lucianique, Lahontan présente une version fictive des conversations qu'il a eues avec le chef wendat Kondiaronk en Nouvelle-France, utilisant des informations sur la culture wendat ("huronne") pour étayer sa critique des normes sociales françaises. Le deuxième chapitre soutient que la parodie de la littérature de voyage dans Les Voyages de Gulliver (1726) est en fait une forme de satire visant la production et la consommation de connaissances dans une sphère publique de l'imprimé en plein essor. Le troisième chapitre examine les Lettres iroquoises de Maubert de Gouvest (1752), une imitation des Lettres Persanes de Montesquieu (1721), dans lesquelles Maubert invente une pseudo-ethnographie des "Iroquois" qui facilite la discussion de thèmes importants dans les livres et les journaux contemporains. Le dernier chapitre présente les Memoirs of the life and adventures of Tsonnonthouan, King of the Roundhead Indians (1763), une imitation anonyme du Tristram Shandy de Laurence Sterne (1759-1767). Bien que Tsonnonthouan s'inspire largement d'une traduction anglaise de Pierre-François Xavier de Charlevoix, il présente un "Indien" générique et fallacieux construit à partir d'informations sur différents groupes amérindiens. Ces études contribuent à la compréhension des représentations des peuples amérindiens dans la littérature populaire européenne du XVIIIe siècle et à la théorisation des rapports de la satire avec la parodie et l'ironie. Elles soulèvent également des questions sur les rapports entre la production de connaissances scientifiques et normatives et l'histoire du livre à l'époque moderne.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".