Fragments d’un voyage en France

In 1802, Chateaubriand plans a Voyage en France that will never be achieved. A few fragments of this project remain: a chapter of the Mémoires d’outre-tombe about a journey to the Midi in 1802, the French sections of the Voyage en Italie, a short stay in Auvergne in 1805 (Cinq jours à Clermont), as well as some mentions of other trips. Tales of the Consulate and the Napoleonic Empire are mixed with the impressions of visits to the same places in the 1830s, producing thematic echoes and historical depth. This article proposes an analysis of this galaxy of texts. In his sketches of provincial, feudal and Christian France, Chateaubriand often hides behind erudition and history to avoid the shock of post-revolutionary reality, but the present reappears: in his argument’s assumptions and his dysphoric gaze. A political impasse prevents Orleanist France from becoming the subject of a coherent work. (in French)