Thursday: talk on French 18th-century escape artist!
<p> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; color: #000000; line-height: 115%; widows: 2; orphans: 2 } P.western { font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: en-US } P.cjk { font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt } P.ctl { font-family: "Times New Roman", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt; so-language: ar-SA } --> </style> </p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> Please join the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for:</p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> </p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> "The In/famous Prison Escape Artist Jean Henri De Latude (1725-1804): A Vicious Character Wrapped up in the Swaddling Clothes of Myth,"</p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> </p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> a talk to be given by Dr. Michael J. Mulryan, Assistant Professor of French at Christopher Newport University as part of the International Literary and Cultural Studies Research Forum.</p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> </p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> The talk will be held in BAL 9024 (Burgess Room) on Thursday, October 25, from 12:30-1:30. The abstract is below.</p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> </p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> For more information about the forum, contact Dr. Liz Black: eblack@odu.edu</p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> </p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> Abstract:</p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> Due to the great success of his memoirs, <em>Le Despotisme dévoilé, ou Mémoires de Henri Masers de la Tude, détenu pendant trente-cinq ans dans les diverses prisons d'État</em> (1790), Latude became a great celebrity in revolutionary France, known as a master escape artist and as a victim of the whims of the Marquise de Pompadour, Louis XV’s mistress, who had had him imprisoned for a harmless stunt to gain her favor in 1749 (he would not be definitively freed from prison until 1784). Although he was always eventually caught while at large after his prison escapes (he escaped from the Donjon de Vincennes twice and the Bastille once), Latude never lost hope and had an incredible resilience to all the setbacks he faced during decades of imprisonment. Thus, it is not surprising that his saga came to symbolize the individual’s struggle for freedom when facing the arbitrary powers of a despotic state. </p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> <br /> Although his rise to fame is not altogether unmerited, it only tells half the story of what was actually a crazed reprobate desperate for whatever attention he could receive from upon high. Known under four aliases during his years of imprisonment, eventually settling on the very noble name de Latude, Jean Henri Aubrespy was actually the illegitimate child of a domestic from Languedoc. Ironically, his readership and more importantly his jailors would be duped by his story believing in his noble origins. His larger than life story, which he tells with great acumen in his memoirs (not without a little help, since the most famous version of them were coauthored by the lawyer Luc-Vincent Thiery), is similar: it is simply a series of exaggerations and embellishments of what actually happened. The myth of Latude, the genesis of which can be attributed to his semi-fictitious memoirs is of obvious historic importance. To this day, his portrait, in which he points at the Bastille, along with the ladder he fabricated in order to escape from the Bastille sit in the Parisian history museum the Musée Carnavalet on permanent display. In my paper, I will analyze both the historical and literary legacy of Latude, a delusional inmate who was most likely mentally ill. Initially a victim of the state, he would victimize his jailors during his prolonged sentence: often doing what they could to get him out of jail, out of stubbornness and by acting irrationally, he would render his jailors’ attempts futile. This “story” has been veiled however by the legacy literature has created for him, one which continues to this day. Although somewhat different, the reality the Bastille’s archives reveal concerning this character is just as uncanny as the Latude legacy that has endured. <br /> </p> <p align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.14in; line-height: 100%"> </p>
Posted By: Elizabeth Black
Date: Tue Oct 23 08:28:41 EDT 2012