Translating English « Public Spirit » into French Political Thought: 1814 -1848.
This proposal is drawn from an on-going study of the role of translation, from
English, in the shaping of French political thought in a period covering the first
Restoration of the Bourbons dynasty (1814) to the fall of the July Monarchy in 1848.
Politically, this period is characterized by the effects of a more or less imposed constitutional forms of government by three successive monarchs who access the French throne within it. Until 1814, France had not had any substantial or consistent experience with constitutional government. The only European model available to French politicians was England, the same nation that had been at war with France for the better part of the past twenty years and who had orchestrated the fall of Napoleon’s empire.
In France, opinion was deeply divided –even within the dominant ideological factions. Ultra-royalists and legitimists pressed for an abolition of the constitution and for a swift return to absolute rule. At the same time, liberals ostensibly sought to preserve the civil liberties obtained at the outset of the 1789 Revolution –even as some among them were gradually redefining those liberties to make them more pliant to the interests of free enterprise and more amenable to the rule of free markets. Frequent confrontations of these extremes made for an unstable, turbulent political and social climate.
Nonetheless, most factions could look to England’s relative political calm and its ensuing prosperity with envy. Those committed to constitutionality realized that political change implied something more than endless drafting of charters or grafting of bureaucratic institutions. What was needed, they concluded, was a new political mentality. And, as more and more French travellers reported on the pervasive presence of the English “public spirit”, it became clear that preserving France’s stature in Europe required fundamental changes in the collective political self-image and massive changes in the culture as a whole.
Translation became the evident and essential instrument for these changes. In the first half of 19 th century translation from English to French attained industrial proportions as knowledge of England became a useful field of expertise. French political dailies reported in detail on the debates at Westminster, journals and reviews carrying translations of articles selected from the thriving British periodical press became fashionable and popular, travelogues of visits to Great-Britain became something of a unique literary genre.
Using samples gleaned mainly from the popular press and various travelogues of the period, this paper will examine some strategic applications of translation in this historical context and attempt to outline the results they obtained.