Frenchmen Into Peasants Into Frenchmen: Revolutionary Past and Future in George Sand’s Nanon

Abstract

ABSTRACT Published following the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, George Sand's 1872 novel Nanon is written as the 1850 memoirs of a peasant woman who had lived through the French Revolution. Focusing on the temporal shifts of the novel, I argue that by considering the temporalities of Nanon in conjunction with spatial movements, we can see Sand's refusal to think about the Revolution as a rupture in history. In the novel, the Frenchmen of the urban revolution are substituted with peasants who can reach back into the Celtic origins of France and construct a more peaceful French society.