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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 75 - 11,309 BARNES, Stephen Leonard, 1945- BERANGER AND BONAPARTISM: A STUDY OF THE SONGS OF PIERRE-OEAN DE BERANGER AND OF THEIR ROLE IN THE PROPAGATION OF THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND. [Recording of Songs by P.J. Beranger avaflable for consultation at Ohio State University Library.] The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1974 Language and Literature, general Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan48ioe © 1975 STEPHEN LEONARD BARNES ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. BERANGER AND BONAPARTISM: A STUDY OF THE SONGS OF PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER AND OF THEIR ROLE IN THE PROPAGATION OF THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Stephen Leonard Barnes, B.A., A.M. The Ohio State University 1974 Reading Committee: Approved By Prof. Charles Carlut 'tkLjjA Prof, Pierre Astier S i V c * - e . Prof. Charles Williams Adviser Department of Romance Languages ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sincere gratitude is extended to the Librairie Armand Colin, the Librairie Hachette, and the Oxford press at Clarendon for permission to quote extensively from their books; to Mne Jean Touchard for her kind encouragement; to Professor Charles Carlut, who inspired an abiding interest in Napoleon and in the literature of the period, and whose guidance and counsel have since been invaluable; and to Patty, Sam and Babette, without whose patient forebearance and support the present study would never have reached completion. ii VITA June 15, 1945 • • • Born— Springfield, Ohio 1967 ....... B.A. Summa Cum Laude, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio 196 8 ............. A.M., Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 1968-1971 ........ Instructor in French, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio 1971-1974 ........ Assistant Professor of French and Director of the Honors Program? Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio 1974 • ........ Teaching Assistant, the Ohio State University, Dayton Graduate Center and Staffing Specialist, U. S. Government, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: French literature Studies in Literary Criticism. Professors Robert Champigny, Quentin Hope, and Hugh Davidson Studies in Nineteenth-Century French Literature. Professor Charles Carlut iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii VITA iii INTRODUCTION 1 Biography Bgranger*s fortunes Approach and methodology Chapter I. THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND AND BONAPARTISM . 30 Background and formation of the Legend Development of the Legend The politics of Libero-Bonapartism Bonapartism Beranger as a literary Bonapartist II. THE CHANSON AND BERANGER 67 Definition of the song History of the genre before Beranger The tradition of the Caveau Types of songs by Beranger Beranger as chansonnier Beranger as litterateur The art of Beranger III. BERANGER»S FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT DOWN TO 1315 111 Childhood influences Lucienfs patronage Beranger and the Consulate Beranger and the Empire Bdranger and the bourboniens iv IV. BETWEEN THE TWO NAPOLEONS 155 Beranger and liberal society The trials and prison terms Vox populi Passy Beranger and the Academy V. BERANGER AND THE SECOND EMPIRE..............203 The retour des cendres The triumph of Louis-Napol6on The final phase VI. BERANGER AND POSTERITY...................... 226 The posthumous songs Ma Biographie and the correspondence The quarrel Since the quarrel CONCLUSION 253 Beranger in retrospect Beranger as Bonapartist APPENDIX A. The recording 270 B. The music 273 C. The texts 275 BIBLIOGRAPHY 237 v INTRODUCTION Sous le simple titre de chansonnier, un homme est devenu un des plus grands poetes que la France ait produits; avec un g£nie qui tient de la Fontaine et d*Horace, il a chants, lorsqu'il l !a voulu, corame Tacite 6crivait. • . — Chateaubriand, Etudes Historiques. preface Biography Pierre-Jean de Beranger (17&0-1857)> who was to be termed in his day le poete national and l fHorace francais. was born in Paris on August 19, 17^0, into a petit-bourgeois family in the Rue Montorgueil. His father, an innkeeper*s son who had risen from the status of grocer*s bookkeeper to that of banker- financier-entrepreneur, styled himself Beranger de Mersix and harbored a vague pretention to nobility, which, his son was later to remark, **ne manquait que des pieces justificatives, 1*exactitude historique •j et des vraisemblances morales.” Beranger*s father seems to have left him little more than a sharp business sense and the particule nobiliaire which our chansonnier insisted on using, all the while denying his right to do so. The father, described in all ^Pierre-Jean de B&ranger, Ma Biographie (Paris: Perrotin, 1B62), p. 15. 1 accounts as ldger. insouciant and prodigue. had married a tailorfs daughter and begot Pierre-Jean and a daughter, who became a nun and outlived her brother in a convent near Paris. At Beranger*s birth his father had long since abandoned his family and fled to Belgium to avoid charges of embezzlement. Young Pierre-Jean was sent off to a wet nurse and ignored, he said, during his first three years, then passed to his maternal grandparents, who indulgently let him grow into a boy who described himself as chgtif and d^licat, subject to violent migraines and eager to find pretexts for playing truant. He occasionally spent time visiting his mother, "insouciante et amie du plaisir," who took him to balls and the boulevard theatre where he observed others, listening constantly and learning much. In sum, he spent his formative years educating himself in the streets. In early 17&9 Beranger de Mersix returned to Paris and promptly put Pierre-Jean into a pension in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he witnessed the storming of the Bastille— the only real instruction he received, he was later to claim. Several months later he again found himself without parental support and was sent to live with a pious republican aunt who kept an inn at P£ronne. It was here that he spent the years 3 of the Revolution, listening to the distant rumble of cannon while he received a very rudimentary instruction based mainly on reading Voltaire, Racine, and the T&L&naque. which comprised the totality of his aunt's library. She insisted on sending him regularly to catechism, had him commune at age eleven, arranged for him to earn his keep by waiting on tables at the inn, and countered as best she could the boy's growing "esprit sceptique et frondeur," which has perhaps best been summed up in the traditional ancedote recounting her habit of sprinkling holy water on her house to protect it; in May, 1792, young Pierre-Jean was knocked unconscious by a bolt of lightning on its very threshold. When he finally regained consciousness his first words were reportedly to his aunt: "Eh bien! Il quoi sert ton eau bdnite?"2 Beranger's eyesight had been harmed by this incident and he had to give up plans to apprentice himself to a watchmaker. He became instead a saute- ruisseau for a notary, Ballue de Bellenglise, who had sat in the Legislative and returned to Peronne to found a free primary school modeled after Rousseau's doctrines. Beranger adored this "Fenelon republican" and rapidly became his best pupil; he presided over the revolutionary 2Ibid., p. 23. 4 club and ignored his grammatical studies in order to devote time to patriotic addresses to send to Citizens Tallien and Robespierre, military drills, and chants r6publicains: he was later to remark of this period, "comme dans ma famille tout le monde chantait, c fest sans doute alors q u fest n6 en moi le gotit de la chanson,"3 Beranger claimed he regretted the lack of classics at the school, and felt that it hampered his later success as a poet. When M. de Bellenglise*s school closed, the master arranged an apprenticeship with the printer Laisnez for his prize pupil, Pierre-Jean claimed he learned on this job, through daily exposure, all that he would later need to know about spelling, grammar and versifi cation; having begun this job "incapable de deviner que les vers fussent soumis il une mesure quelconque," several months later he was turning out ribald couplets of suprisingly good composition.