La Bretagne à l'Académie française

Abstract

This article examines the tensions which shaped the careers of three Breton writers – Charles Le Goffic, Anatole Le Braz and Auguste Dupouy – who achieved a degree of national recognition during their lifetime while maintaining their regional affiliations. Although ‘regionalist’ writing was in vogue from 1890 to the early 1940s, such a label could be a handicap for authors attempting to achieve legitimacy on the national stage. In contrast to ‘French’ authors well established in Paris, these ‘polygraphic’ writers published works across a wide variety of genres, with multiple publishing houses both in the capital and in Brittany. All three lived a kind of double life, oscillating between works of universal scope and those which foregrounded local specificity. This analysis offers a fluid model of literary activity which calls into question the rigidity of the familiar Paris/provinces dichotomy, demonstrating how these authors helped to redefine the frontiers of national literary life while affirming their regional identity.