Transcript Breton Nationalism - University of Ottawa

Brittany (Breizh)
Brittany and the French revolution
 The revolutionary period was particularly marked in
Brittany by royalist and counter-revolutionary
movements.
 The peasant rising of the so-called chouannerie
against the revolution was suppressed with great
barbarity, leaving a deep sense of hostility towards the
central government.
 Doue ha mem Bro!
Les Chouans
th century Brittany as an internal colony
19
 In the nineteenth century, France’s overseas colonies
grew- especially in Africa (eg Algeria), and beyond in
the Pacific.
 Centralisation and the desire to impose uniformity in
culture and language meant that many of the regional
languages of France were neglected and despised by
the authorities.
Brittany
as
an
internal
colony
 Brittany in particular with its language and specific
way of life increasingly was treated as if it were an
‘internal’ colony.
 The Bretons were seen as the ‘other’, foreign but at the
same time ‘French’.
 We see this ‘colonial gaze’ in the work of such artists of
the 19th century, like Paul Gauguin, who came to
Brittany to paint what seemed like an exotic culture.
Previous
photograph
 ‘Brittany diorama’ from the French room in the Paris
Ethnographic Museum, c 1895.
Previous
photograph
 Young women in traditional costume in Pont-Aven.
Musee des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la
Mediterranee, Marseille.
Paul
Gauguin
 Gauguin related to the Bretons in Pont-Aven (western
Brittany) in a similar way to the natives of Tahiti where
he went after the 1880s.
 We can see in his work an eye for the exotic, otherness
of colonised peoples.
Cultural awakenings
 The beginnings of a sense of the rediscovery of Breton
roots and identity can be felt at the beginning of the 19th
century.
 The first modern dictionary of Breton by Jean-Francois
Le Gonidec 1821.
 An important year in the cultural history of Brittany was
1838 when La Villemarqué published the landmark
anthology of Breton songs called the Barzaz Breiz.
 Francois-Marie Luzel-started publishing genuine
folktales in Breton and many songs from rural Brittany.
 .
Barzaz Breizh- the Heroic Poems of Brittany
 1867-T. Hersart de La Villemarqué published a large
anthology of ‘popular’ songs collected (he said) from
the ordinary working people of Lower Brittany.
 The songs or ballads collected tell the story of the
Bretons, across the centuries.
 (Anne Auffret and Yann-Fanch Kemener).
Cultural awakenings 19th century
 A reaction against the traditional exploitation or
neglect of Brittany by the central government in Paris
before and after the revolution manifested itself in
varying ways.
 Eventually it took shape with the formation of the
Union Régionaliste Bretonne in 1898, which gave
rise afterwards to a variety of splinter groups.
Breton culture at the end of the 19th century
 At the same time, the Bretons of Lower Brittany- les
Bretons bretonnants- or Breton-speaking Bretons
remained strongly Catholic, and adherred to their
ethnic customs.
 The Buez ar Sent (Life of the Saints) was usually the
only Breton book found in Breton homes.
Breton Nationalism: cultural
and political
Brittany in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Meet Becassine!
Bécassine! C’est ma cousine!
 Breton character in comic strip, who first appears in
1905.
 She is a housemaid who wears traditional Breton
costume.
 She is portrayed without a mouth (usually).
 She is a stereotype Breton, and reflects the contempt
shown by mainstream France to the Bretons.
 Between 1915 and 1950, 27 volumes of Becassine stories
appeared.
Bécassine the Breton revolutionary
Becassine the movie 2001