Representation du " Sauvage" et de la nature dans la dramaturgie de la fin du XVIIIe siecle

Abstract

My objective is to examine how late eighteenth-century theatre in France seeks to awaken public awareness and cultivate a moral consciousness regarding Indigenous peoples, who are often assimilated to nature in the territories of the New World then under exploration. The three plays studied, by Chamfort, Olympe de Gouges, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, each mobilize the figure of the “noble savage” as a critical device used to denounce social injustices as well as the violence inherent in enslaving practices. This figure of the “savage” thus serves to interrogate the norms of Western societies and their inhumane practices toward “natural men”, in contradiction with Enlightenment ideals such as liberty, equality, and fraternity. These dramatic works are further inscribed within a Rousseauian reconfiguration of nature, one that reinforces republican ideals by idealizing an original harmony between human beings and the natural world. Finally, this study highlights a contemporary relevance of these plays, insofar as it draws a parallel between the crisis of sensitivity toward Indigenous peoples and their environment at the end of the eighteenth century and the current ecological crisis. It likewise reconsiders the agency of Indigenous peoples and of nature through the lens of contemporary ecological thought, particularly the works of Malcom Ferdinand, Philippe Descola, Baptiste Morizot, Michel Serres, and Bruno Latour which invite us to rethink the ways in which we perceive, understand, and inhabit the living world.