Wounded by Memory: Art, Glory, and the Fantasy of Revanche

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  • March 19, 2019
Creator
  • Smith, Joshua
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Art and Art History, Art History
Abstract
  • In this thesis, I examine the imbrication of memory, masculinity, and glory in the cultural politics of revanche. I argue that revanche functioned not only as a desire to restore the annexed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to France, but also as a cultural fantasy that reproduced and masked the antagonism between a glorious French past and resounding defeat in 1871, variously described as a wound or mutilation. The visual, I maintain, played a constitutive role in the construction of fantasy, as it bandaged as well as effaced the wound of defeat to reassert French glory. In paintings, posters, processions, films, and monuments, representations of dying soldiers and the war dead reveal how the fantasy of revanche changed between its emergence in 1871 and its abatement in post-World War I France. Across these media, invocations of the dead transitioned from calls to remember, to act, and finally, to forget.
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Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Rovine, Victoria
  • Sherman, Daniel
  • Sheriff, Mary D.
Degree
  • Master of Arts
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2015
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Place of publication
  • Chapel Hill, NC
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  • There are no restrictions to this item.
Date uploaded
  • June 23, 2015

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