Echoing temporalities: French travelers to the United States of America (1927--1986)

In looking at several French travelers' discourses on America between 1927 and 1986, this dissertation aims to explain how the American voyage impacts the travelers' identification with French values and the French nation. I seek to understand how their representations of European temporality---as in "history" and their engagement as historical subjects---shape their depictions of America. The ultimate goal of this work is to provide an answer as to how literary works can help understand Franco-American relations beyond the conundrum of French anti-Americanism.;The travelers who came to the United States before World War II relied on comparisons between the French "norm" and the United States. For Siegfried and Maurois, America's history is late; but for Duhamel, Morand and Celine, America embodies France's future. Their confrontation with America shakes their collective belief in Europe's Greco-roman heritage and cultural supremacy; they conclude that France needs to strengthen its identity and denounce the threat posed by America.;After World War II and the geopolitical change induced by the onset of the Cold War, comparisons between the United States and Europe vanish. The travelers gear their remarks toward the contradictions between the myth of "Americanism" and American social reality. For Sartre and Butor the widening gap between myth and reality provides the necessary dynamic to foster American history in a Hegelian sense. A teleological connection thus established between French and American history enables the travelers to look back at France's and America's original value---liberty---which they both betrayed in condoning segregation or colonial oppression.;At the end of the Cold War Baudrillard reverses Sartre and Butor's discovery of an astute Franco-American original relationship and states that both countries' temporalities are impenetrable to each other. France embodies the nineteenth-century whereas America stems from modernity. Baudrillard's aesthetical construction of America sublimates his polarized argument; indeed, America exceeds Butor's Mobile in subsuming its discourse into aesthetic experience.;The voyage threatens and reinforces the travelers' sense of historical identity. The travel narratives help their authors nuance their judgments; beyond their feelings, the texts reveal their reflections on French and American temporalities.