This article considers how Jean Amila's Le Boucher des Hurlus (1982) and Didier Daeninckx's Le Der des ders (1984) expose hidden crimes committed by figures of French military authority during the First World War; how they reject the myth of a France united by combat embodied in the heroic and steadfast poilu; and how they complicate and pluralise memories of the war through the existence of a counter-memory and a counter-myth founded upon the figure of the mutin de guerre. It illustrates how the French historical crime novel resolves the tension between the historian, concerned primarily with collective ideas and responsibility, and the judge, seeking to ascertain the extent of individual guilt, thereby constituting an intermediary, marrying the ethical, the factual and the political. It concludes, however, by exploring the limits of memory, narrative and collective political identity proposed in both works, but also considers the readership of such crime fiction as a contemporary counter-community.Cet article étudie la manière dont les romans Le Boucher des Hurlus (1982) de Jean Amila et Le Der des ders (1984) de Didier Daeninckx dévoilent les crimes commis par certains chefs militaires en France pendant la Première Guerre mondiale. Il examine également la fac on dont ces deux romans réfutent le mythe d'une France unie dans le combat (représenté par le culte du poilu héroïque et résolu) et, ce faisant, créent un souvenir plus complexe et pluralisé de la guerre à travers un contre-souvenir et un contre-mythe construits autour du personnage du mutin de guerre. Il illustre la fac on dont le roman policier historique allège la tension qui existe entre l'historien (qui se concentre d'abord sur les idées et les responsabilités collectives) et le juge (qui cherche à établir la culpabilité individuelle) constituant ainsi un intermédiaire qui épouse l'éthique, la vérité factuelle et la politique. En conclusion, il exposera néanmoins les limites de ce souvenir, de ce récit et de cette identité politique proposés par ces deux romans. Il évoquera également en conclusion la possibilité de considérer le lectorat de ce genre de roman policier en tant qu'une contre-communauté contemporaine.
It is widely acknowledged that the Spanish Civil War was one of the contributory factors to the collapse of the French Popular Front, forcing a wedge between Léon Blum's government and the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) which opposed Blum's policy of non-intervention. By examining French communist reportage of that conflict, this article studies the tensions occasioned by continued loyalty to the Popular Front and a commitment to the preservation of the Western democracies on the one hand and the perception of a revolutionary reformulation of Spanish society on the other. It argues that communist representations of the Civil War serve to resolve this tension into a strategic revolutionary understanding of the politics of the anti-fascist alliance; such an understanding could not be discerned in France where French communists were increasingly frustrated by the relative conservatism of its own Front Populaire. What emerges in these representations of the Spanish Republic and its Popular Front regime is a utopian vision of such politics, a vision embodied in the heroes and heroines of the Spanish Republic, whereby the revolution is successfully postponed but signs of a radical, long-term transformation of the world remain visible.
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