La Saison au Bois de Boulogne de Maurice Beaubourg : un récit épistolaire et sentimental chez les apaches
La Saison au Bois de Boulogne by Maurice Beaubourg: An Epistolary and Sentimental Tale Among the “Apaches”

Summary/Abstract: La Saison au Bois de Boulogne (1896) is the title of a collection of tales by Maurice Beaubourg (1859–1943) including the eponymous introductory short story that we study here. It recounts, in the form of letters, the passionate and thwarted love of Gosse-Girond and his mistress, Môme-Taciturne, whose brother Gueule-d’Empeigne is in the Santé. The epistolary exchanges between the main protagonists and their colourful circle of friends (Bobo de Montmartre, Rosa-la-Créole, Fromage, Le Petit-Napoléon, le Docteur, Arthur) allow us to see the evolution of their romantic relationships and the amorous upheaval provoked by Fille-en-Filoselle, the rival of Môme-Taciturne, in the affections of Gosse-Girond. In sixteen fictitious letters, the sensitivity of the apaches is mocked by the use of intertextuality and a very elevated style. It is both a pastiche of the epistolary narrative of the Enlightenment that plays with the sensitivity and pride of the Gosse/Môme couple, and a parodic fin-de-siècle short story. The author humorously transposes the amorous and generic stereotypes of the Regency era to a band of apaches.

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