Der Elefant in der französischen Literatur – von der kolonialen Ausbeutung zur affektiven Verbundenheit

Abstract

This article explores the figure of the elephant in French literature. While the elephant was once seen as an emblematic animal representing power and strength and was interpreted allegorically, modern literature reveals two trends: on the one hand, the animal is domesticated, orientalized, and subjected to colonial civilization processes; on the other, its right to life has been increasingly recognized since the mid-20th century, with literary works advocating for its survival and against exploitation and killing. The elephant is thus reinterpreted allegorically, now as an allegory of the destruction of nature. The first trend is read through a postcolonial lens, the second from an ecocritical perspective. Examples of analysis include Jules Brossard de Corbigny’s orientalizing travelogue Éloge de l’éléphant (1872), Jean de Brunhoff’s Histoire de Babar le petit éléphant (1931), and Romain Gary’s novel Les racines du ciel (1956), which is considered the beginning of ecocritical literature. The motif of the fight against poachers and ivory smugglers is analyzed in Niels Labuzan’s Iviore (2019), Véronique Delamarre Bellégo’s À la recherche des éléphants perdus (2011), and Laura Trompette’s La Révérence de l’éléphant (2022), where elephants not only act as a catalyst for the protagonists’ ecological commitment but also inspire a new emotionality.